Antonella Corda

The founder still at the cellar door

Hand-picked Vermentino comes in from family vines before winemaker Antonella Corda sets the line at Antonella Corda in Serdiana: preserve the grape, keep the place legible. Since 2010, she has held the winery as founder and producer, a title that carries authorship as much as management. Her formal ground is agricultural study at the University of Sassari, and the estate reads like an agronomist’s project before it reads like a label. The vineyard comes first.

The lineage is local and practical. Corda inherited family vineyards from her grandfather, and the estate’s working memory runs through farming, soil, and the long discipline of Sardinian agriculture. The winery sits in lower Campidano, a few kilometers north of Cagliari, where vineyards share the agricultural landscape with olive groves and grain fields. Corda’s stated frame is respect for the land and for the origin of the grape, which in the cellar becomes a preference for directness: indigenous varieties, organic farming, and winemaking that avoids covering the vineyard’s voice.

Fifteen hectares under organic care

The estate farms 15 hectares of vineyard within a 40-hectare mixed farm, producing about 60,000 bottles annually. Vermentino, Nuragus, Cannonau, and Syrah form the bench of the program, with wines under Vermentino di Sardegna DOC, Nuragus di Cagliari DOC, Cannonau di Sardegna DOC, and Sardegna DOC. The vineyards are managed organically, and from the 2021 vintage the wines have carried organic certification. That conversion is not treated as ornament here; it is part of the method by which Corda keeps soil work and cellar work aligned.

Two family vineyard sites give the wines their footing. Mitza Manna is planted to Vermentino and Nuragus, while Mitsa S’ollastu carries Vermentino and Cannonau near the border of Ussana. The soils move through sand, clay, loam, calcium, and river pebbles, with deep sandstone marls in the territory lending freshness and sapidity. In the cellar, hand-picked grapes are gently pressed in a vacuum press. Vermentino rests for six months on its lees in stainless steel. Cannonau is vinified in stainless steel, then spends six months in stainless steel and non-toasted barrique.

A quiet estate among olive groves

The cellar works in a restrained register, closer to the vineyard than to spectacle. The setting is agricultural rather than staged: rolling hills, vineyard rows, olive trees, grain fields, and the stillness of Serdiana around the winery. The tasting room belongs to that same scale, small and guided, with the estate’s bottles read through the land that grew them. Nothing in the room needs to hurry the point.

That quiet matters because the wines ask for attention to small distinctions: Vermentino on lees, Nuragus from family ground, Cannonau kept away from heavy oak, and the occasional skin-contact or amphora expression within a program still anchored by Sardinian varieties. The estate itself, 15 hectares of vines held inside a 40-hectare farm, is at Antonella Corda.