Sweet night

In the placid gardens of the Mas Figueres rural hotel, the Dolça Nit (Sweet Night) took place. Ten wineries, mostly from DO Montsant and DOQ Priorat, gave us an opportunity to taste their sweet wines together with selected pastry and sweets. The deliciously cool night and live music added to the enjoyment.



Mas Figueres rural hotel



Celler El Masroig is the cooperative winery of the El Masroig village, DO Montsant, and is leaving the mediocrity of other coops producing some personal, high quality wines. In the sweet segment, their speciality are mistelas (mistelles, obtained adding alcohol to the unfermented must and later aging): Mistela Negra and Mistela Molt Vella (Very Old). Both come from Carinyena grapes, but while the former is just aged for one month, the latter is kept in a Solera system forty years old. Mistela Negra is a deep cherry colour, with a nose with red fruit and aromatic herb and refreshing acidity in mouth. The Molt Vella shows a more evolutioned orange tinge, with ripest fruits, chocolate, nuts, coffee, tobacco…in the nose. Sweet but balanced with acidity, very long. For me, one of the stars of the show.

Orto Vins, DO Montsant, is a new winery with vineyards in El Masroig and owned by four well-known winemakers, one of them Joan Asens, Alvaro Palacios’ oenologist. Dolç d’Orto Blanc is made mainly from Garnatxa blanca, left to dry for some time and then pressed and fermented. Citrus aromas, good integration, long. Dolç d’Orto Negre is a 100 % Garnatxa negra from individually selected berries. Dark cherry red, with lots of fruit (black, figs, all ripe). Fresh and long.

The Falset-Marçá cooperative winery from DO Montsant is another outstanding coop. Their wines Etim Verema Tardana Blanc and Negre come, respectively, from Garnatxa blanca and negra grapes of late harvest. Both wines are aged in oak for four and ten months. The white is fresh, with honey, citric and floral aromas. The red goes more for red and black fruit, cocoa, raisins. Dense and balanced in the mouth. Some of the best QPR in the night.

As a guest from a DO that also boasts excellent sweet wines, Mas Estela from Empordà displayed their Estela Solera and Moscatell. The Estela Solera is 100% Garnatxa negra, a late harvest coupled with a Solera system. Dark amber, with black fruit and the oxidative aromas typical of soleras, lighter than others in sweetness in the mouth. Estela Moscatell is 100 % Muscat, and shows the characteristic aroma profile of the grape. Balanced and long.



Costers del Siurana, one of the DOQ Priorat pioneers, contributed with their Dolç del Obac: 80 % Garnatxa negra, 10 % Cabernet Sauvignon and 10 % Syrah. Dark, complex, dense and powerful, but perhaps somewhat overpriced.

Mas d’en Gil (DOQ Priorat) offered their Nus, which means knot, named so because of its complex winemaking. Garnatxa negra, Syrah and a dash of Viognier, using three different winemaking methods, give as a result a wine with cherry colour and cherry aromas, plus orange, wood and minerality.

The Capçanes coop (more details in this older post) poured their Pansal del Calàs, a 70 % Garnatxa negra and 30 % Carinyena fortified at mid fermentation. Comparatively light, not too sweet, designed to pair even some meat dishes.

Pleret Blanc Dolç from DOQ Priorat Buil & Giné winery is a naturally sweet Garnatxa blanca, Macabeu and Pedro Ximénez white, aged in oak and with white and red fruit notes.

There were two wineries that offered non-commercial wines (although most of the other wines have productions well below 3’000 bottles). Cellers Capafons-Ossó had a very special Mas dels Masos, their flagship wine, from a vintage in which the adverse climate forced them not to produce the normal dry wine. Instead, they painstakingly selected the over mature berries that had survived and made a sweet red that they pour on very special occasions.

Mas Martinet presented a ranci dolç made with a very old solera system that they could save some years ago in one of the historic wineries of Priorat. It is not clear whether Sara Pérez, its oenological mother, will finally market it, but I do hope she does!

I really enjoyed this exhibition. Many wines, almost all of them coming from the same zone and from similar grapes, but very different outcomes, most of them with high quality. It is about time that quality sweet wines get a better recognition and are not considered as the lesser offshoot of the wineries.

http://www.builgine.com/index2.asp?lan=eng

http://www.cellercapcanes.com/

http://www.capafons-osso.com/eng/index_esp.html

http://www.costersdelsiurana.com/en/index.html

http://www.domontsant.com/en

http://www.doqpriorat.org/eng/index.php

http://www.masdengil.com/ang/index_main_menu.htm

http://www.masestela.com/entraGB.htm

http://www.masmartinet-ass.com/eng/index.html

http://www.cellermasroig.com/info.php?id=en
http://www.etim.cat/
http://www.doemporda.cat/en/home/action-actualitat.html
http://www.masfigueres.com/index_us.html



Clos Martinet vertical: today may be a great day…

The lyrics of the song by the local folk singer Joan Manel Serrat were dancing in my head as I drove towards Priorat. This may be a great day…will it? The first steps were clear and had its roots some months before.

When I was visiting Mas Martinet in March, Josep Lluís Pérez, while discussing with him his first wines, made a remark: “We must make a vertical tasting of Clos Martinet!” I agreed heartily, and, with the help of Oleguer from Vins Noè, gathered a group of twelve fortunate wine lovers, including some top bloggers like David González (Adictos a la Lujuria), Jaume Aguadé (Vins de Catalunya) and Ricard Sampere (Els vins que vaig tastant).



Josep Lluís Pérez



We first met in Mas Martinet with Josep Lluís and then visited his Serra Alta vineyard. I had been there in March; the sight was more astonishing then, with all the iron rings plainly in view, but now it was beautiful with all the green shoots blooming.

Serra Alta in March



Serra Alta in May



There, by the plot, we could enjoy an impromptu master class about vineyard management by Josep Lluís. His absolutely scientific approach (he had figures and ratios for everything) left us speechless, especially those with scientific background. He spoke, among other things, of vigour, production limitation, watering, leaf surface, bag-in-box wines…always with this scientific yet practical approach.

Some of the happy participants

A phone call from his daughter Sara pulled us back to reality and the winery. There we met her laying the last glasses for the tasting.

The grapes-to-be

I (most of us, perhaps) had several goals in mind:

• The most obvious, enjoy a bunch of excellent wines 
• Meet Sara and Josep Lluís and benefit from their knowledge and personality 
• Last but not least: check whether great Priorat wines age well. This was a big discussion from the beginning of Priorat’s new era, and many voices had cast doubts on the aging potential of wines with a high proportion of Garnatxa.

Let us start with the wines.

The first was 1990. This was in fact still a wine made together with Rene Barbier, Alvaro Palacios and Carles Pastrana, and bottled under different labels for each of them. Very much alive, with utter elegance.

The second bottle was 1993, the second year than Josep Lluís made his wine independently. I was a little bit disappointed; I had looked forward to tasting again a 1992, the first Clos Martinet I had, but never look a gift horse etc…And 1993 did compensate: big, flowery, long, one of the best.

1996, said Josep Lluís, was his last wine. Sara answered back instantly: “It was my first, not your last. You still have a lot of wines in you!” It was great to witness the play between the two personalities, sometimes agreeing, sometimes not; after all, as explained in my previous post, if he is the scientist, she is the philosopher, or perhaps the mystic (thanks, Oriol!).

The lineup

1998 was a wine in turmoil. Sara explained that, after some 12 years, their wines undergo a transformation from big, youthful puppies to more elegant, sedate adults. 1998 had just done this, and showed still many primary and secondary aromas, but the tertiaries had started to appear. A great wine nevertheless; racing with 2000 in the preference of many.

2000 was perhaps the most appetizing for me. Still young, very fresh, fruity, big, but starting to migrate to the senior status.

2004 was in comparison young and, although it showed plenty of potential, needed time to show its hand.

As Sara and Josep Lluís explained, with aging, after the twelfth year transformation, wines smoothed the differences between vintages and tended to homogenize, showing the minerality and common terroir underneath. 

I have now little doubt that Priorat wines can age well, and will have to seriously plan ahead to be able to taste these memorable wines at a riper age than I am doing now.

Explanations by the two winemakers were both precise and emotional. They remembered the details of each year in terms of weather and coupage (there was a trend to increase Carinyena and decrease Cabernet) and seemed very happy to share these memories and their wines with us. It was a real pleasure to be invited to this event, which will be one of my most remarkable wine memories so far.

Sara and Josep Lluís

But the day was not over. In the afternoon, after a quick but rewarding visit to Mas Sinén to taste, just before bottling, their Coster 2009, Mas Sinén Negre 2009 and a surprise they have up their sleeve (I am looking forward to it!), I was back home in time to see FC Barcelona beat Manchester Utd to our fourth Champions League title.

It sure was a great day!!

http://www.doqpriorat.org/eng/index.php

http://www.masmartinet-ass.com/eng/index.html
http://www.massinen.com/

Carinyenes at Porrera

In my last 2010 post I explained my views on public wine tasting events and mentioned some of them I had already attended.

 

The Priorat and Montsant Wine Exhibition (Fira del Vi) in Falset mentioned there is a major mass attraction that is surrounded by smaller, more selective events that are worth attending. From Friday April 29th to Tuesday May 2nd the wine lovers (that can spare the time and cost) have their hands full with tastings, pairings, presentations and winery visits. I was able to attend a few of them, and in the upcoming posts I will endeavour to tell you about my experiences.

In the village of Porrera, already mentioned elsewhere in this blog, are located some of the oldest and finest Carinyena vines in the Priorat DO. In many cases, they are processed separately from other grapes, and the coupage is made just before bottling. Few Porrera wines, however, are pure Carinyena; usually the blend contains also Garnatxa and perhaps Cabernet Sauvignon, Merlot or Syrah.

 

Porrera wineries offer a unique opportunity every year at the “Carinyenes a Porrera” tasting. They present their best pure, unblended Carinyena wines before the coupage is done. Of course, in many cases the wine comes directly from the cask, without any bottle aging; however, the potential is there, and is very rewarding to taste them and have an inkling of what the wines in which they take part will be like.

One surprising aspect of this event is that is somehow illegal. Not that tasting wine is forbidden in Priorat; rather what is forbidden is the commercial use of the word Carinyena to name the grape varietal, because there is an Aragonese village, Cariñena, in the DO of the same name. Silly enough, but the wineries usually have to resort to the name Samsó, which is in fact another grape (some say the one named as Cinsault in France) or devise misspellings such as Caranyana. But if you ask the old winegrowers basking in the sun in the village square, they will tell you they have farmed Carinyena vines since childhood…

 

There were over twenty-five wines from eighteen different wineries; it was not the time or place to take down detailed notes of each, but I can name the ones that pleased me most:

• Ardévol i Associats
• BalmaPrat 
• Celler de l’Encastell 
• Cims de Porrera, with three different, outstanding wines 
• Clos Dominic 
• Ferrer Bobet 
• Joan Simó 
• Mas Martinet 
• Trosset de Porrera

Many wines, but all of them different, as a result of the microclimates of each plot, the age of the vines and the winemaker skill. A feast for Carinyena lovers, showing that this variety, often despised as unrefined, when in proper conditions can yield great wines.

 

http://www.cellerardevol.com/

http://www.roquers.com/index3.html

http://www.grupperalada.com/cimsdeporrera/index.htm

http://debrujasyvino.blogspot.com/

http://www.ferrerbobet.com/

http://www.cellerjoansimo.com/

http://www.masmartinet.com/

http://www.cellersdeporrera.com/

http://www.doqpriorat.org/eng/index.php

 

Science and philosophy at Mas Martinet

Josep Lluís Pérez

When in the early 80s Josep Lluís Pérez arrived in Priorat to head the local Tech School, the zone was a stagnant, back of beyond winemaking region producing sturdy bulk red wine to be mixed elsewhere (see my previous post on the matter). But after establishing the first Oenology studies there, with the aid of his Biochemist wife, and together with the other four pioneers, he put Priorat upside down and in the radar of wine connoisseurs around the globe. Myself included; Mas Martinet were the first new Priorat wines I enjoyed, and Clos Martinet is since a given in my Christmas lunch.



A root struggles through the slate



A biologist by training, Josep Lluís has the typical scientific enquiring mind. He wants to know whats, whens and whys of everything, and experiments tirelessly to improve, defying conventional wisdom, even now at 75. In the beginning (early 90s) he established his Clos Martinet – Martinet Bru wines in the first – second wine model of Bordeaux, using the best grapes for Clos Martinet. From the start, even being a big, dense, dark red wine as great Priorats usually are, Clos Martinet was one of the most elegant of the bunch. Martinet Bru was a good introduction wine at a more moderate cost.



But when in 2001 he surrendered the sceptre to his daughter Sara, she changed the concept. Wines would be single vineyard sourced, with the goal of expressing the terroir as much as possible. If her father is a scientist, Sara goes for philosophy.



Llicorella in Els Escurçons



Did Josep Lluís retire and relax after 2001? Not at all! He is very active experimenting and acting as consultant to other wineries, something he has done extensively in the last fifteen years. Present projects include making wine in unlikely countries like Egypt or Sweden. And if you meet him in his winery or at an event, he will ensnare you with fascinating descriptions of his methods and experiments, which include selective, timed watering of the vines, and closed circuit, anaerobic fermentation. A born teacher.

Mas Torrent, the vineyard of Martinet Bru

Nowadays Mas Martinet has four different plots and wines, as follows:

• Martinet Bru comes from the vineyard of Mas Torrent, close to the Montsant DO, and planted with Garnatxa, Syrah and Carinyena. Grapes go to a separate facility, Mas Martinet Assessoraments. Relatively lighter, perhaps due to the vineyard’s closeness to Montsant; an excellent wine altogether.

• Clos Martinet comes from the land around the winery. These are the vines at less height over sea level (200 m), with warmer nights and earlier ripening. A blend of Garnatxa, Carinyena, Cabernet Sauvignon and Syrah. Dark cherry, intense, more fruity than its cousins.



Serra Alta and the rain pool of Mas Martinet from Els Escurçons



• Camí de Pesseroles comes from three neighbouring small plots along the path to Pesseroles. Two of them are planted with Garnatxa, and the other with Carinyena; all of them very old. Dark, mineral, concentrated, complex.

Els Escurçons

• Els Escurçons (The Vipers) is a vineyard on top of a hill (600 m) with stunning views, including most of the plots of Mas Martinet. With increasing Garnatxa and decreasing Syrah grapes, it is lighter and more floral that Camí de Pesseroles.

Natural yeasts are used, and the wines ferment in concrete vats. Aging is done partially in oak foudres and partially in oak casks.



Serra Alta



There are two additional plots, Serra Alta and Mas Seró, used for experimental purposes and also to produce kosher wine. Serra Alta is remarkable because vines are planted more tightly and develop around iron rings of adjustable height. This disposition allows increasing by two thirds the number of vines per hectare and tripling the leaf surface, enhancing vine metabolism.



Weather monitoring at Serra Alta



All these are organically farmed, with the idea of giving back to the vineyard all that is taken away: skins, pips, stalks...except the wine, of course! Certification is expected soon.

In another post I may explain the other wines that Sara Pérez makes (not to mention her brother Adriá or her cousin Marc), alone or together with her partner, Rene Barbier Jr., son of the other great guru (imho) of Priorat. Guess what their children will be good at…



Sara Pérez



http://www.doqpriorat.org/eng/index.php

http://www.masmartinet-ass.com/eng/index.html



Vintaix Magnum Rave

Do not be confused; I do my best not to praise extravagantly any wines, and I hope I am not starting to lose my head. It is rather a wine tasting I attended recently, which its organizers, Vintaix, call Rave. It was not a wild party, as the name may suggest, but certainly informal, with live jazz and fluid protocol, and ably led by Miguel Figini.

The first wine of the night was a DO Cava: Castellroig Brut Nature Gran Reserva 2005. This Cava was explained by its winemaker, Marcel Sabaté, who stressed his obsession with terroir and its combination with a given grape variety.

The wine, as a Gran Reserva should, showed developed secondary aromas of bread and croissant, together with a very fine, well integrated and persistent bubble. It comes from a coupage of old-vine Xarel.lo and Macabeu, with no less of 36 months aging. This is not the ideal Cava for a refreshing single glass, but rather a great wine to pair with a full meal.

The second wine was a Petrea blanc 2003 barrel fermented white from the Mas Comtal winery, DO Penedès. It has mainly Chardonnay with a dash of Xarel.lo, with 10 months of Hungarian oak. The colour was a developed lemon yellow, not surprising since it was from the 2003 vintage. In the nose it was understandably closed at the beginning, but with time it developed aromas of butter, white fruits and a hint of wood, with some mineral notes at the end. In the mouth it confirmed the aromas detected; it was unctuous, still fresh and with a long finish. It showed the master hand of one of the leading Penedès winemakers, the late and lamented Joan Milà, who died prematurely last year.

The first red came from DO Empordà and the Espelt winery. Terres Negres 2007 is a blend of Cabernet Sauvignon and Carinyena, aged twelve months in French oak. Deep cherry colour, with the oak evident in the nose, along with ripe fruit. In the mouth it is well structured, somewhat oaky, with enough tannins and acidity to keep for several years, when it will probably show greater balance.

Signes 2008 is a DO Catalunya red from Bodegas Puiggrós, in the town of Òdena. It is composed of Sumoll and Garnatxa coming from 60+ years vines. Sumoll is a local grape variety that all but disappeared and is now being revived by a handful of wineries, using modern winemaking techniques hitherto never available to Sumoll wines. The old vines, still grown as bushes, are harvested manually and the grapes are collected in small boxes. Aged in French oak for ten months. Deep red, with aromas of toast and spices, with kaleidoscopic evolution in the glass after a few minutes of swirling. In the mouth also show up citric fruits and licorice; excellent balance. Explaines by its enthusiastic winemaker, Josep Puiggrós, it shows how Sumoll wines can be in the future.

Moving now to DO Montsant, we sampled Dosterras 2007 from Celler Dosterras. It comes 100% from 100+ years old Garnatxa vines, harvested manually in 10 kg boxes and aged for sixteen months in French oak. Intense red, with fine legs, there is black fruit and minerality and flower aromas; with a very smooth mouth, freshness and an excellent balance with the wood notes.

The last red was one of the DOQ Priorat pioneers, Clos Martinet 2004 from Mas Martinet. As Magí Batllevell explained, it has 40 % Garnatxa, and 20 % each of Carinyena, Cabernet Sauvignon and Syrah, aged in French oak for sixteen months. Very deep red with few signs of evolution. As for aromas: very mineral, balsamic, black fruits, coffee and toast notes. It fills the mouth, with still noticeable acidity, noble tannins, velvety, long lasting.

After the tasting I had the opportunity to discuss with Silvia Naranjo some of the comments I made on the Guide of Catalan Wine in a previous post. An appropriate end to the Rave, an experience I hope to repeat soon.

http://www.crcava.es/catala/flash.html
http://www.do-catalunya.com/english/engmenu.html
http://www.doemporda.com/index.php?action=presentation
http://www.domontsant.com/
http://www.dopenedes.es/en
http://www.doqpriorat.org/eng/index.php
http://www.castellroig.com/
http://www.mascomtal.com/eng/index.php
http://www.espeltviticultors.com/
http://bodegaspuiggros.com/4/
http://www.dosterras.com/english/index.html
http://www.masmartinet.com/
http://vintaix.com/comunidad/