How Yanni Buys Wine

Every bottle on our list got there because somebody tasted it and said yes. Usually that somebody is Yanni. Occasionally it's Denise, overruling Yanni.

For the last ten days, the two of them have been doing that in Sardinia.

This is the part where we're supposed to tell you it's a vacation. It isn't, or at least not entirely. They were on a wine mission, which in practice means driving switchback roads up into a mountain village with more sheep than people, knocking on the door of a family that has worked the same hillside for generations, and staying about three hours longer than planned. Which is what happens when Yanni meets someone he likes.

Sardinia is a strange and wonderful place to do this. There's no limestone on the island. The vines grow in granite, schist, and iron-red sand, with sea wind salting everything, and you can taste all of it. The whole island has exactly one DOCG, Italy's top classification, and it's a white: Vermentino di Gallura, which comes out taut and saline with grapefruit and a whisper of bitter almond. The red is Cannonau, a cousin of Grenache that the Spanish brought over during their four hundred years in charge. The Sardinian sun gives those grapes thick skins, and thick skins mean the wine carries two to three times the antioxidants of most reds.

Which may explain the other thing about Sardinia. It was the first place on earth designated a Blue Zone. Roughly 20 centenarians per 10,000 residents, about double the Italian average. One of the island's great winemakers, Antonio Argiolas, made it to 102. Every Sardinian will tell you it's the Cannonau. We have decided to believe them.

They visited two wineries. Vike Vike in Mamoiada, deep in the Cannonau mountains, where Simone Sedilesu makes about 25,000 bottles a year off four and a half hectares and started the tour not with a sales pitch but with the hillside itself. And Vigne Surrau in Arzachena up in Gallura, all granite and modern cellars, where Flaviano poured Vermentino that tastes exactly like the wind coming off that coast.

Here's the line from Denise's travels: "By the time we left, every bottle came with a face, a story, and somebody we hoped to see again."

That's the job. That's always been the job.

Meanwhile, Back in Scripps Ranch...

Two specials this week. One of them, you asked for. Spicy Italian sausage with tri-color rotini. Sausage browned hard so the edges go dark and sweet, fresh vegetables, and a creamy tomato sauce that lands somewhere between comfort and heat. The cream takes the edge off the chili without hiding it.

There's a reason for the shape. Rotini comes from fuso, the Italian word for spindle, because it was originally made by wrapping a strip of dough around a thin iron rod by hand. In southern Italy that hand-rolled pasta was Sunday food, and Sunday food meant sausage. Those spirals were built to hold onto exactly this kind of sauce. We didn't come up with the pairing. We just declined to improve on it.

Drink it with the Beronia Rioja Reserva, one of our newest bottles. Tempranillo, eighteen months in oak, black plum and dark chocolate with a little thyme and orange zest. Smooth enough to take the heat without picking a fight with it.

Niçoise is back for the week. Yellowfin tuna, Kalamata olives, new potatoes, green beans, egg, avocado, and a garlicky Dijon-lemon vinaigrette. Still not what they'd serve you in Nice. Still better.

Fitting timing, too. This is heat calls for something fresh.

Pour the Vermentino di Gallura alongside it: Sardinia's only DOCG, crisp and saline with a bitter-almond finish, from the exact island they've been standing on for ten days. Sea meets sea.

See Where Your Wine List Comes From

We put the whole trip online so you can come along.

Photos, notes, and the two wineries that made the ten days: Vike Vike up in Mamoiada with Simone and Federica, where the tour started on the hillside and ended with a lunch nobody wanted to leave, and Vigne Surrau in Arzachena, granite country, underground cellars, Flaviano pouring Vermentino with the coast right there.

It's the best answer we have to why we do this in person instead of ordering off a sheet. Go take a look, then come drink some of it.

Know someone who gets genuinely excited about a wine they've never heard of? A Yanni's gift card sends them our way, and we'll take it from there