Gianfranco Manca’s Panevino is located in the small village of Nurri in Sardinia, an hour’s drive from Cagliari. Here you can meet one of the most uncompromising, straightforward and free figures in the Italian wine scene. Gianfranco Manca was born as a baker, and at a very young age he took over his uncle’s bakery to produce the classic Sardinian bread whose tradition he learned from his mother and aunt. The experience gained in breadmaking led him to investigate the alcoholic fermentation-transformation of wine. He decided to recover ancient family vineyards planted as saplings and abandoned for some time. His vines are impressive, some of which are over 100 years old and Gianfranco knows each and every one. His is an ancestral viticulture made up of hard work and risks, carried forward with an absolute knowledge of agriculture and an awareness of the territorial heritage: Cannonau, Murisuterru, Molletu, Semidano, Nuragus, Vernaccia, Retallada and other local varieties recovered, on a total of 6 hectares of land.
No addition of sulphites, no filtration, zero interventions; and it is precisely for this reason that its wines are clean, very clean.
Today he makes about 15,000 bottles every year (scattered all over the world and very rare to find) – unique works – because they are always different from year to year – inside and outside the bottle – without any intervention in the vineyard or in the cellar. Wines understood as forms of art, canvases on which to paint ever-changing emotions and sensations. Wines that bottle emotions.
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