Our International Love Story & Sardinian Vineyard
Spilling the tea on how I unexpectedly met my husband and how we ended up planting a vineyard in Italy.
How It Started
The day was just like any other day working in the tasting room at Adelaida Vineyards & Winery. Shooting the shit with my fun loving co-workers. Enjoying myself while pouring wines for guests, sharing Adelaida’s story and what makes these wines (some of my favorites in Paso Robles) so special.
A few weeks earlier, I had asked the winemaker and cellar master if I could join the winemaking team for harvest so that I could experience winemaking firsthand. After some light interrogation from the cellar master to make sure that I wasn’t too much of a girly girl to handle the hard work (seriously?), they both agreed. I was looking forward to transitioning over to the cellar in a week or so, and I had just learned a harvest intern was on the way to join us from Italy.
On the day he arrived, Ryan, the assistant winemaker, brought him into the tasting room to meet everybody. As she came through the backdoor, a tall, dark haired, tanned guy with a curled mustache entered behind her. “This is Marco, our Italian harvest intern,” she said as she introduced him to our tasting room team.
We all flocked over to give him a warm welcome, especially the older retiree, Linda, who was a seriously good time and had recently reminisced with us about her long-ago Italian lover. As Linda led Marco to the kitchen to get him some coffee, I couldn’t help but think - wow, this guy is seriously Italian, with the mustache and Euro-style to match.
Little did I know that day would change the course of my life forever.
Our first day on the harvest winemaking team was spent cleaning, cleaning, and cleaning some more. Marco and I were tasked with power washing all of the floors, from the barrel room to the cellar. I’m pretty sure it was the first time I’d ever used a power washer and as I blasted my way through the barrel room, Marco watched me with a perplexed look on his face. “Uh, Nikki,” he offered. “I think you need to do it more like this.” Eyes opened to the proper technique, I began working more effectively and we chatted away.
I learned he was from Sardinia, he’d studied winemaking, and had worked in wineries in Italy and Chile, too. Marco couldn’t understand why I, someone with no winemaking experience, would want to work in the cellar for harvest. I explained that I was pursuing my passion for wine and had recently started a wine blog, so I wanted to learn all about the winemaking process.
He quickly became my biggest supporter as harvest was underway, snapping photos of me in winemaking action every chance he had. “For your blog!” he’d say excitedly.
I soon learned the cellar master with whom Marco had been carpooling was charging him for rides, even though Marco’s house was already on the way to work. I mean, come on! This guy is here from the other side of the world for a temporary position not making great money and you’re going to charge him for rides? That didn’t sit right with me, so I offered to start giving Marco rides to work because it was on the way for me, too.
That was one of the best decisions I ever made. We started getting to know each other better (with the help of Google translator) and soon a great friendship was blossoming. Well, I thought it was just a friendship anyway.
Then, one night when I dropped Marco off at home after a night out with friends, he went in for a kiss on the cheek. Then one on the other cheek, as Italians do. I was confused….was that him trying to kiss me or him just being Italian?
It was about a month after he arrived when we finally went on a real date. We drove about 30 minutes south to San Luis Obispo and went for dinner and cocktails after. While sipping our craft cocktails at the bar, laughing and flirting, the winemaker from Adelaida and some of the office staff showed up, which was a hilarious twist! I vaguely remember a conversation with Marco in which I said something along the lines of, “We work together, should we really do this?” And his reply was, “Who cares?!”
That night, we had our first kiss outside of a pizza place that made authentic Neapolitan pizza, which Marco managed to find and somehow already knew the owner, and our love story commenced.
I’ll never forget heading out to the vineyards just the two of us to take samples and stealing kisses in between vineyard rows in those first weeks of harvest.
Though before we knew it, harvest was coming to an end and Marco’s visa was expiring soon. He was headed back to Italy right before Christmas. One day when we were driving to the beach to relax, Marco broached the subject, “So, you’re coming with me right?”
“What do you mean?” I responded. “You need to come meet my family,” he said. “This isn’t finished here.”
And that was that. We decided that Australia would be our next destination since we could both get working holiday visas there. We found harvest jobs in McLaren Vale that would start in February. Marco headed back to Sardinia and I arrived on the island to meet the family just before my 30th birthday in December.
I’ll never forget my first time in Sardinia and the warmest welcome they gave me. His sweet parents cried with joy the first time we met! We spent the holidays in Sardinia, during which time Marco took me to some of the family land in the village where he’s from and shared, “I want to plant a vineyard here one day.”
Following lives lived together in Australia, California, Italy, and France (more to come on those adventures), we made his dream a reality four years later.
Our Sardinian Vineyard Planting Adventure Begins!
In January 2023, I arrived in Sardinia after a harrowing series of flights, missed connections, and a lost (then found) suitcase. Just in time for Capodanno (New Year’s Eve), I reunited with my love. It had been almost a year since we’d been together, which made our reunion all the more special. We’d been going through the process of getting my husband’s immigrant visa, and the challenges that came with it, which was all grueling to say the least.
Returning to Sardinia for the 4th or 5th time was still as special as ever. Though I feel like I’ve grown so much since first arriving on this tranquil island to meet my future in-laws in 2018 without a grasp on the Italian language to rely on for communication. We connected nonetheless through food and wine, of course. But this time around, it really felt like a homecoming.
Our vineyard planting journey began with an unexpected challenge. We had around 4,500 fewer plants than requested thanks to mother nature. Last year, we went around to vineyard sites in Sardinia that Marco vetted to collect canes of the varieties we wanted to plant.
For the rootstocks, we selected a new type of rootstock called Series M, the result of a study from the University of Milan which sought to develop rootstocks more acclimated to high temperatures. Since it’s a newer type of rootstock, it’s expected to have a lower rate of success for grafting and laying roots in the soil. For example, every five out of ten plants take to the soil and/or graft successfully. Whereas other types of rootstock like 110R and 1103P, which we also ordered, have a higher rate of success. Something closer to 90% according to Marco.
Vivai Cooperativi Rauscedo (VCR), one of the biggest producers of grafted vines in the world, completed the grafting process for us throughout 2022 in a process similar to this. Apparently, since the growing season was unseasonably warm and dry, we had a less successful uptake of the grafting process. Hence, why we ended up with less vines to plant than originally planned.
Marco spent the first weeks of January getting logistics situated, including getting a quote for irrigation installation, organizing vine shipment from the mainland in Italy, sourcing posts for the vines from friends in the business, ordering the remaining wires and end posts for the trellising system, and researching electric fencing we’ll need to keep the wild boars out.
Our Vineyard Sites
We planted our vineyards on two properties both owned by Marco’s family.
The Mountain Site
One is situated up in the mountains with a spectacular view looking down on the village of Anela (where his family is from) and the expansive, green valley with rolling hills in the distance below. We planted our mountain site with three different clones of Arvesiniadu, a white variety indigenous to the Goceano region where Anela is located. Arvesiniadu is generally characterized by high acidity and tannic character for a white wine, a little skin maceration goes a long way. Its aromas tend towards hay, beeswax, bitter almond, and an herbal/balsamic quality. As these wines age, they can develop an almost petrol-like quality similar to Riesling. The mountain site is much cooler at a higher elevation, which we hope will preserve freshness and aromatics of this variety.
The Valley Site
The other vineyard site is situated on the valley floor at the foot of the slopes leading up to the village and mountains to the north. This property is just as beautiful surrounded by mountains on one side and rolling green hills dotted with flocks of grazing sheep on the other. This site will be much hotter than the other in the mountains and is where we’ll plant our two red varieties: Cannonau and Bovale Sardo. More to come on these two varieties, as I’ll be diving deeper into these Sardinian reds in future newsletters.
We spent a full weekend cleaning up the terrain of the valley site. This property has been in Marco’s family for 50 years and abandoned for about 40. There was a ton of pesky overgrowth and clean up that needed to be done, and we had to enclose the site with fencing.
Unexpected Weather, Then the Planting Commenced
Our planting preparation was put on pause due to a serious, weeklong cold front that passed through Sardinia bringing heavy snow along with it. Our mountain site was completely covered in about 15-20 cm of snow and we needed to wait 2-3 weeks for everything to melt, thaw, and dry again.
We ended up planting our vineyards around the last weekend of February 2023 over a 3-day planting extravaganza with the help of family and friends. I truly understood the meaning of “it takes a village” that weekend. Our friends and Marco’s family from the village came out to help in whatever way they could. The older family trimmed the roots on thousands of vines and put them in a water bath with nutrients before they were planted. The more able-bodied friends and family helped distribute vines to a squad that worked row by row pressing the baby vines into the ground manually using a metal fork like contraption with handles. Oh, and let’s not forget the friends who came days before to survey the sites and map out the correct measurements for the rows of vines. Luckily, Marco is friends with a bunch of viticulturists and winemakers!
Each evening ended with a celebration around the table savoring traditional Sardinian dishes my mother-in-law spent the week preparing. It was a long weekend I will always cherish.
The next months involved hammering in thousands of small rods near each vine that would provide support as the vines started to grow. Plus, other maintenance to make sure the vineyard was in order before our departure. We had to re-enter America when May rolled around to utilize Marco’s visa for his green card entry before it expired.
Back to Sardinia in 2024
We returned to Sardinia in late January 2024 only to be devastated by vineyard damage that had taken place the year prior, which Marco’s family failed to inform us about. There had been torrential downpours and flooding sometime in the fall. The valley site vineyard had flooded and we lost about 1,500 vines as a result. Really, the vineyard had drainage issues that weren’t properly addressed prior to planting because the older men in the family didn’t do as we previously requested to resolve the issue. Instead, they remained stubborn and did something that made zero sense, but I will spare you the details. And this was the unfortunate result.
So, when the bureaucracy came to certify our vineyards and found that we didn’t have the number of living plants currently planted as we had been given in our government quota, they decided not to certify our vineyard. Now, we have that hurdle to deal with, along with resolving the drainage issue, but we are pressing on.
The first big item on the to-do list was to clear all of the natural green overgrowth between the vineyard rows and around the vines. We used the tractor to clear between the rows and then got to work with hoes and cleared around the plants by hand! It was very hard work, but we want to be certified organic and will not be using any weed killers.
Next, Marco worked with a specialist who came with his crew to graft our chosen varieties onto American rootstock we had planted in place of all of the missing grafted stock. We also had to resolve irrigation issues because the team that dug our point well at the mountain site did not put in the correct type of pump and we weren’t able to consistently get enough water to fully irrigate the vineyard.
Over one weekend in the spring, we manually cleared out thousands of huge rocks from the mountain site vineyard so that the tractor could be used more effectively. Rocks had been removed prior to planting, but there were still a TON. We also spent lots of time tying up the vines to the rods for support because they grew a lot this year, and gave nutrients to the vines. A couple of natural copper and sulfur vineyard treatments were done in spring, as well as green pruning.
Since this is only the second year of the vineyard, we still didn’t have much production when harvest season rolled around. Plus, the birds got to most of the grapes that did grow before it even came close to harvest time. So, we’ll be coming up with something to keep the birds away next year.
As you can see, planting a vineyard and starting a winery is a labor of love! I’ve learned that the passion really needs to be there, especially when starting from scratch. But it will all be worth it one day.
Now, we’re back in America and I’m working on my business plan for a wine imports business and wine club. Something I’ve been dreaming up for a while now and I’m excited to see where it goes.
The vineyard will soon be dormant in Sardinia and Marco’s uncle can handle any maintenance needed until Marco goes back for pruning early next year. Our life is a crazy adventure, but we’re doing what it takes to make our dreams a reality.
Thanks for joining us on this journey!
You’ve got perseverance in spades, girl! What a journey!! What a story!! ❤️