Agricola Punica
Giacomo Tachis is known as the “father of the Super-Tuscan movement.” You might think that the consulting winemaker behind legendary wines like Sassicaia, Ornellaia, Tignanello and Solaia would reflect on his game-changing work in Tuscany and rest on his laurels, but you’d be wrong. After serving as a consulting enologist in the early 1980s for the Consortium of Sardinian wines, Tachis was tapped to by Antonello Pilloni, the owner of Cantina di Santadi, to help elevate its wines. Working on the sea-swept, sun-drenched island, Tachis fell in love with Sardinia’s wild beauty, and he felt both inspired by the island’s 5,000 years of winemaking history as well as the region’s untapped potential, so he began tinkering, much as he had in Toscana. Tachis began blending Sardinia’s native Carignano grape with Bordeaux varietals, and soon, he knew he was onto something very special. In the late 1990s, Tachis and Pilloni joined forces with winemaking legend Marquis Nicolò Incisa della Rocchetta and bought two estates in Sardinia’s Sulcis Meridionale region. Agricola Punica was born with the 2002 release of its Barrua, and Montessu followed in 2005. Today, the 420-acre AgriPunica estate, still jointly run by Pilloni and the Incisa della Rocchetta family, continues in the trailblazing path of the late, great Giacomo Tachis, crafting outstanding wines that marry the robust allure of Sardinia’s Carignano with the elegance of international-style grapes, even adding a white, Samas, that uses the same “Super-Sardinian” principle to tremendous results.
