Xarel.los from Penedès that everyone needs to taste

There are grapes that have managed on their own merits to make their way onto the list of must-haves to be tasted and researched.

Although known by professionals, they can go unnoticed for many wine lovers, and it is a pity as they own some singular features, which translate into rich, different wines, and who does not like tasting distinct wines?

Northeast of Spain is the home of xarel.lo variety, specifically in a small denomination of origin of barely 2,500 hectares of vineyards. This grape of compact clusters, fine skin and medium sprouting and ripening, is today the great white lady of Barcelona's vineyards. However, this has not always been the case. The xarel.lo grape is mainly recognised for its role in making Cava sparkling wines. It is one of the three varieties of the trinomial varietal of Catalan cava; xarel.lo, macabeo and parellada, and is undoubtedly the most important of the three for its power, degree and acidity.

The Penedès is a production area that has reinvented itself. It began as producer of bulk wines, with a wide range of foreign varieties such as chardonnay, cabernet sauvignon or merlot. Varieties still present in these lands and source of great wine, everything said. The repositioning of this denomination of origin (D.O.) was such that its production area changed considerably. In the Peñín Guide 2011, we reported that the number of hectares of vineyard in the appellation amounted to over 25,000, which has nothing to do with the current data. However, the major conversion was not in its size but rather in the change to a model of wine region focused, although not exclusively, on white wine and more specifically on the native variety xarel.lo.

The projects developed in recent years, have been opening the range of the styles of xarel.lo. If, at the beginning of this reconversion, the wines were centered in the freshness and a greater or smaller herbality, winemakers have sharpened their wits and work, now, with elements that somehow help to obtain a greater degree of differentiation, either by means of aging of lees, with elaborations in containers different from the steel like for example the vat or the concrete and with elaborations little intrusive, that border on the concept of natural wine, some more or less success.

Today we propose 11 xarel.los to bring to your table, a way to learn about this unique white wine typology through some singular wines, all of them of great quality and very linked to their origin.

Electio is a great white wine from xarel.los, over 80 years old, cultivated following the biodynamic works, which the third generation of the Cusiné family decided to explore. The grapes come from their Hisenda Miret estate, where the main feature is the deep limestone and clayey soil. The must ferments in new and second wine barrels for approximately 18 days. This wine is part of the Microcuvées collection, where they have a collection of wines with a low production, some of them less than 500 bottles.

This winery, like many other wineries in the area, works not only with the native xarel.lo and macabeo, but also with others such as chardonnay, syrah, merlot and cabernet sauvignon, many of them with great success.

Mas Comtal is a family winery led by Marta Milà, that gathers 40 hectares of organically grown vineyards, located in the easternmost part of the Penedès, at the foot of the Garraf. Geographically, it is located at an altitude of 350 metres above sea level, on quaternary sand-based soils, silt and clay. It has very calcareous soils of medium type and characterized by a great permeability to water. Antistiana Xarel.lo surprises you not only because of its marked varietal character, like all these wines we are sharing with you so far, but also because of its mineral background (dry stones), its freshness and its long mouth, where it seemed a very interesting oily sensation, which makes the wine forceful, with a tasty, elegant and long finish. Of course, at this price you can't ask for more. Congratulations to the winery for such a good wine!

Only 2,800 bottles of this vintage have been bottled, so it is more than likely that if you don't hurry it will run out.

Josep María Albet i Noya, is an indispensable figure in the change undertaken by the DO Penedès in the last century. He is a pioneer in his area, an adventurous and restless person who has not stopped experimenting in order to find the best way to improve the quality of the Penedès DO's vineyards and wine. In all the producing areas there are enterprising people who contribute to the whole and Josep María is one of them, in this little producing corner. El Fanio is a wine that surprises us with each new harvest. This wine comes from the highest vineyard of the house, located in the Muntanyes d'Ordal, with vines over 80 years old, settled on calcareous and clay soils, with low levels of organic matter and rich in magnesium. At the production level, this wine is aged in cement eggs and acacia barrels. The result is a wine where the lees become the protagonist, with rich bakery maricas. It is not a light wine but just the opposite, it is vigorous in the mouth, tasty, so it will perfectly accompany more forceful dishes, including white meat in sauce.

Mas Codina is an estate of 40 hectares located in the Alto Penedès, producers of sparkling wines with the seal of the DO Cava and still wines under the protection of the DO Penedès, such as the one that has brought us here. This xarel.lo is a wine from two old vineyards, one of 60 years old and the other of 36 years old. The orography of the land makes these vineyards 300m above sea level, facing north and with an extremely calcareous terrain. In terms of oenology, the wine was fermented in large French oak barrels, 500 lts, and then aged in contact with the barrel and its own lees for 5 months. This is a wine that can bring us closer to aromas of cava, with the presence of the notes of yeast , and with a very characteristic dry fruit background. This 2018 vintage has pleasantly surprised us, and for this reason the wine has reached 92 points, far exceeding the 90 obtained by its previous 2017 vintage. No doubt another wine worth of being part of our winery representing the Xarelian line.

Gramona is already one of the great labels in the world of sparkling wine in Spain, and it is so on its own merits, for having been able to position Cava, when the times when it was bottled under its protection, at its qualitative peak. Let's remember that one of its sparkling wines was the first cava to reach 99 points, a real event in the Peñín Guide 2017, it was the Enoteca Gramona Brut NatureParaje Calificado 2001, a proverbial sparkling wine. It is true that in terms of still wines it has not achieved the greatness of wines from second fermentation in the bottle, but the truth is that they are increasingly making wine with a more personal and representative character. This Font Jui 2016 is a good example of this.

Font Jui is an estate located in the Alto Penedès subzone, with an extension of 4 hectares of xarel.lo, with a very particular clay-limestone soil. It is a certified wine with the Demeter seal, which means that the work in the field and in the winery is ecological and biodynamic. This wine is fermented and aged in 300 litre French oak barrels (fine grain and medium toast). They use 33% of new barrels and the rest of second and third wine. The wine is also aged on its lees for 3 months. The most striking thing about this wine is that it captures the uniqueness of the xarel.lo grape in all its expression, and does so accompanied by the freshness to which we are accustomed in sparkling wines, with a very particular citrus character and a mixture of dried flowers and herbs, which for us must show a good xarel.lo. It is surprising how young this wine of the 2016 vintage is, it would be interesting to follow its evolution closely to understand the scope of these still wines based on the xarel.lo grape.