Isola dei Nuraghi IGT is the main IGT (Indicazione Geografica Tipica) title used on the Italian island of Sardinia. While most of Sardinia's 15 IGT titles cover specific valleys and traditional wine-growing areas, Isola dei Nuraghi covers the entire Sardegna administrative region. This includes not just the main island but also the smaller islands that lie off the Sardinian coast (the most significant of which are Sant'Antioco and San Pietro, off the island's south-western corner).
The name 'Isola dei Nuraghi' means literally 'the island of the Nuraghi', and warrants some explanation. Sardinia's Nuraghi are the conical stone towers that dot the landscape, often in key strategic, defensive positions. They were built between 1900 BC and 730 BC, and were so culturally representative of this period that it has come to be known as the Nuragic Age. The 7,000 or so surviving Nuraghi have become symbolic of Sardinia and its distinctive culture. The most famous Nuraghe location is the Su Nuraxi di Barumini complex, a UNESCO World Heritage Site since 1997.
According to the IGT documents that govern the appellation, wines made under the Isola dei Nuraghi title may be red, white or rosé. In practice, the vast majority are red, and based on Carignan, Grenache, Cabernet Sauvignon and Syrah. Although varieties of French origin dominate these wines, native Sardinian grape varieties such as Cagnulari (red) and Nasco (white) are also used.
The varietal labeling restrictions found in most Sardinian IGTs also apply here, and affect several of the island’s key grape varieties: Cannonau, Carignano, Giro, Malvasia, Monica, Moscato, Nasco, Nuragus, Semidano and Vermentino. While these grapes may be used to make a single-variety wine, their names must not appear within that wine's name, or on its front label. This may seem like the typical over-administration of antiquated appellation laws, but there are genuine motivations behind such a law; Sardinia’s focus on varietal winemaking means that the names of these grape varieties are already strongly associated with higher-priced (and theoretically higher-quality) DOC-level wines. If both DOC and IGT categories both used varietal labeling, the meaning and uniqueness of such names as Vermentino di Gallura would be diluted.
The IGT category was introduced in the early 1990s to give winemakers an economically viable compromise between restrictive, tradition-bound DOCs and the lowly Vino di Tavola (table wines). In essence, IGT wines are an expression of a wine region rather than any particular wine style, so to remain useful as labeling terms, their names must be sufficiently different from local DOC titles as to avoid confusion. This is why the names selected for IGTs are so often taken from the culture, geography or history of that place (see also Rubicone and Paestum).
According to the parameters above, Isola dei Nuraghi is a clear success story, but it is evident in retrospect that the name is meaningful only to Italians, or those familiar with Sardinia's landmarks or history. A similar situation has been developing in recent years regarding the DOC and IGT names of another Italian island wine region, Sicily. Whether this fact will precipitate a change in the local DOC and IGT naming system (as it has done in Sicily) remains to be seen.
