Francesco Cadinu

Eight parcels kept separate

The parcels reach the cellar one by one for Francesco Cadinu, winemaker at Francesco Cadinu in Mamoiada, where Cannonau sets the discipline. He has held the role since 2015, the year he and Simonetta established the family winery in the Barbagia hills, giving formal shape to a viticultural memory described by the estate as five generations deep. The bench here is not broad for breadth’s sake. The work stays close to Cannonau, with Granatza appearing in Mattio, and the estate’s language keeps returning to the ghirada, the local parcel, as the unit of attention.

Cadinu works from a small, family-run holding in Mamoiada, with about 8 hectares divided across 8 parcels that differ in exposure, altitude, and vine age. Some vines are about 20 years old; others are described as more than 120 years old. That range matters in a cellar built around separation rather than early blending. Each vineyard comes in with its own pressure, ripeness, skin, and memory of granite hill, and Cadinu keeps those distinctions legible through the method rather than smoothing them away.

Cannonau, native yeast, wood

The program rests on spontaneous fermentation, without added yeasts, and on vinifying each vineyard separately. Perdas Longas gives the clearest view of the cellar rhythm: September harvest, spontaneous fermentation without temperature control for 15–20 days in small vats, then 12–15 months of aging in wooden barrels. Ghirada Fittiloghe narrows the focus further, using grapes from the parcel of the same name and aging for 15 months in French oak barrels before bottling.

The named wines read like a map rather than a range built for display. Perdas Longas, Ghirada Elisi, and Ghirada Fittiloghe sit in Cannonau di Sardegna DOC; Tziu Smone is a Barbagia IGT rosé from Cannonau; Mattio is a macerated Barbagia IGT white from 100% Granatza. The emphasis remains sustainable, small, and parcel-led, with old vines and native fermentation doing more of the talking than cellar intervention. In 2026, Perdas Longas 2023 received a 100/100 guide score, a number attached to that bottling, not to a generalized claim about the house.

The cellar in Mamoiada

The cellar keeps the scale of a family address. Tastings happen in the winery space, not in a large commercial estate, and the room carries the pace of someone explaining vineyards they live with rather than labels they merely pour. Bread and cheese belong to the table, but the real pairing is Cadinu’s account of the ghiradas: exposure, altitude, vine age, the old Cannonau rows around Mamoiada, the way one parcel answers differently from another.

The atmosphere stays conversational. The Barbagia hills are present without scenery becoming theatre, granite under the vineyards, old vines in the family story, bottles close enough to keep the names useful. In a small cellar, hospitality can become performance; here it is more practical than that. The family structure shows in the way the wines are introduced, with Francesco and Simonetta’s founding year still close to the identity of the place.

A narrow line carried forward

There is continuity here. Cadinu remains at the same station he took in 2015, with the estate still centered on Cannonau and the parcels of Mamoiada rather than an expanding set of varieties. The next measure is likely to be the same one the cellar already asks for: how Perdas Longas, Ghirada Elisi, Ghirada Fittiloghe, Tziu Smone, and Mattio keep reading the ghiradas of Francesco Cadinu.