Wines from Sardinia — Italy’s other major winemaking island in the Mediterranean, besides Sicily — have been increasingly appearing in retail wine shops and on the wine lists of major restaurants in the U.S.

Although this island off of Italy’s west coast, about an hour’s flight from Rome, makes a great variety of wines from native grapes and non-native varieties that are seldom grown elsewhere, the introductory brigade has been composed largely of one white, vermentino, and two reds, cannonau (the local name for grenache) and carignano, or carignan.