Sardinia (Sardegna), 125 miles off the Italian mainland, is remote and insular, and — thanks to long Spanish rule — several of its grapes are Spanish in origin: cannonau (the same as Spain's garnacha), carignano (cariñena/carignan) and the ancient girò.
Cannonau, planted all over the island, is Sardinia's most important red — a bold, dry, spicy wine with chaparral and dried-herb flavours evocative of the parched island itself (terrific alone, sometimes blended, as in Sella & Mosca's Tanca Farra with cabernet).
Girò makes an interesting Portlike wine near Cagliari, and carignano a decent, earthy red in the far-southern Sulcis.
Two whites are essential: the unusual, deliberately oxidised, bone-dry, bitter-almond vernaccia di Oristano (Sherry-like, and unrelated to Tuscany's vernaccia), and vermentino — a terrific dry white that could be any Italian wine lover's nightly house wine, its aromas mirroring the dry, windswept island in notes of wild rosemary, sage and dried lavender, and at its finest labelled vermentino di Gallura in the far north near Corsica.