Just outside Cagliari in southern Sardinia, the Mora&Memo farm makes intensely fruity wines from native grape varieties. For example, a rosé made on cannonau and monica, an unusual blend from this beautiful island. Meet Elisabetta Pala, who started the winery in 2013.
Sardinia has many interesting autochthonous grape varieties, including cannonau (the local name for grenache noir), vermentino, monica, carignano and bovale. But despite the almost perfect climate, exciting grape varieties and skilled winemakers, Sardinia has not yet managed to make a name internationally.
“We are bad at collaborating and lack a strong consortium (ed .: producer organization), such as Brunello di Montalcino or Prosecco DOC has,” explains Elisabetta Pala.
Her family started the Pala winery in the fifties. Today it is one of the best-known wineries in Sardinia. Elisabetta Pala is 34 years old and inherited 40 hectares in 2013. Since then, she runs her own brand, which she named Mora&Memo.
“It was tough in the beginning to be so young and a woman. Especially here in traditional Sardinia, it was difficult to be taken seriously. But I did not give up,” she says.
“My winery is located just north of Cagliari, and we are close to our beautiful sea, something that gives saltiness and an extra nuance to our wines,” she says, adding that the biggest challenge is the dry climate because she has chosen not to irrigate.
“We have a lot of calcareous clay and work to keep the soil porous and airy. The roots of our vines go as deep as eight meters into the ground, so they usually do well,” she says.
She works with domestic grape varieties in addition to a small amount of sauvignon blanc and focuses on the primary fruit.
“I only use steel tanks, not oak barrels, specifically to make fruit-driven wines that show the character of the grape varieties,” she says.
Her favourite variety is the monica grape, if she has to choose.
“It is a wine that I associate with my childhood and that my grandparents drank. It is floral and with low tannins but with character”, she says.
Her rosé wine “é” (IGT Isola dei Nuraghi) is a blend of monica and cannonau. It is salmon pink, with a lot of freshness and a nose of red berries and roses. It is low in alcohol, with only 11.5 per cent.
All the winery’s bottles have a peculiar shape, rounded and with a glass closure.
“I wanted a rounded bottle. First and foremost, it is a tribute to curvy women, like me, and also as a reference to that Sardinia is a matriarchal society, even if it sometimes does not seem so,” she says and laughs heartily.
Read more: https://www.moraememo.it
