Sella & Mosca was founded at Alghero, on the north-western coast of Sardinia, in 1899 by two Piedmontese: Erminio Sella, an engineer and grandson of the statesman Quintino Sella, and Edgardo Mosca, a lawyer. They arrived while phylloxera was destroying the vineyards of mainland Europe and recognised that Sardinia's isolation had kept the island clean. Their first venture was a nursery of phylloxera-free grafted vines, supplied to growers across Italy and southern Europe; the nursery catalogue eventually ran to more than 1,600 varieties. The winery itself was built in 1903, and the vine-supply business continued until 1960.
What they reclaimed from the flat, sheep-grazed plain north of Alghero — I Piani — became one of the largest contiguous vineyards in Europe and the second largest in Italy. The estate today runs to around 542 hectares under vine across three distinct zones: roughly 520 hectares on the calcareous, clay and sandy soils of the Nurra plain at Alghero, naturally rich in iron; a smaller holding on the granite of Gallura in the north-east; and a few hectares of bush-trained Carignano on the mineral sands of Sulcis in the south-west. The Alghero DOC, granted in 1995, exists largely because of this estate.
The founders were amateur Egyptologists, and the house logo — figures pressing grapes — is taken from the tomb of Mereruka at Saqqara. The property passed to the Campari group in 2002 and to Terra Moretti in 2016, which also owns Bellavista in Franciacorta and Petra in Tuscany. Sella & Mosca remains the island's benchmark producer of Vermentino, Cannonau and Carignano, and the only commercial producer of 100% Torbato.