Espelt Viticultors, has been one of the wineries chosen in the Empordà wine selection in Decanter, one of the most prestigious publications in the world of wine. The Coma Bruna and La Vella wines have been highlighted by the expert Fintan Kerr, and he has scored them in his expert selection of the Empordà.

Coma Bruna: a century-old jewel of Carignan

Coma Bruna 2018 is a wine that embodies the essence of the old vineyards of Carinyena. From century-old vines, planted in 1909, this wine offers a complexity and depth that can only be achieved with age and meticulous care. Fintan Kerr describes it as “brambly, floral and slatey”, Coma Bruna stands out for its freshness and firmness, showing a fruity depth that reflects its centuries-old heritage. Matured for 13 months in foudres, this wine has a robust and evocative structure, which makes us think it will also age very well in the bottle. The combination of its aromatic profile and its maturation process make it a special wine, which reflects without artifice the character of a local variety from the Emporda such as the Red Carignan.

La Vella: the elegance of the White Carignan

On the other hand, La Vella is an authentic expression of another local Empordà variety of which very few strains are preserved in a century-old vineyard: Carinyena blanca (White Carignan). Also tasted by wine expert Fintan Kerr, La Vella is distinguished by its notes of white flowers, hazelnuts, orange peel and ripe stone fruits. With ample acidity that sustains a long, smooth finish. All of this makes this wine a refined and balanced tasting experience. La Vella, 100% White Carignan, has been matured for eight months on fine lees in cement eggs, a technique that contributes to its texture and complexity, which also makes us think that it will have a good maturation in bottle and will allow us enjoy it for many more years. Both La Vella and Coma Bruna have organic certification, which once again points to Espelt Viticultors’ commitment to organic viticulture and the production of wines that respect and celebrate their terroir.

Our commitment to quality and sustainability

These tasting notes from Decanter  not only highlight the quality of Espelt Viticultors wines, but also the dedication to sustainable and organic winemaking practices. By preserving and paying tribute to centuries-old vines, we not only recover local varieties that have almost disappeared, but also protect a very valuable landscape and cultural heritage.

If you want to explore the treasures of the most authentic Empordà, Coma Bruna and La Vella represent a unique opportunity to savor history and local varieties in their maximum Empordà expression. These scores are a recognition of the constant work to preserve the territory and a winemaking tradition of more than 8 generations. We’re toasting to celebrate!

This Wednesday we received more than 50 representatives of the global partnership Mediterranean Climate Action Partnership (MCAP) which aims to coordinate between Mediterranean climate zones in the adaptation and mitigation of climate change. At the meeting we explained our management of the lands of Mas Marès: a mosaic that combines pastures, olive trees, vineyards and cork oaks.

For more than twenty years we have managed the Mas Marès vineyard, at Cap de Creus, where we produce the wine of Anna Espelt’s most personal project and where we have promoted an agroecological project with the advice of the technicians with the Cap de Creus Natural Park. The main objective of the project is for vineyards, pastures and cork trees to coexist in symbiosis and help increase biodiversity and fire prevention. It is a total of 172 hectares located in the heart of the Cap de Creus Natural Park which are distributed with different uses: pastures for extensive livestock, olive groves, vineyards and cork oaks. The latter are part of the most fragile ecosystem, located to the south of the territory, the furthest part from where fires can come. The project has a triple objective: increasing biodiversity, increasing the resilience of the land to climate change and fire prevention.

Winegrowers, firefighters, biologists and foresters: a joint work

Ponç Feliu, director of the Cap de Creus Natural Park, Marc Castellnou, head of GRAF, and Míriam Villar of the General Directorate of Forests and Biodiversity also took part at the meeting. All three have emphasized that this mosaic management strategy helps to increase biodiversity, stop forest fires and preserve the Mediterranean landscape. On the other hand, the secretary of the Natural Resources Agency of California (USA), Wade Crowfoot, also participated. The American secretary describes Catalonia as a “leader” region in relation to climate resilience. “In California we have a lot of strategies as well, many of which are similar to what’s here and we’re learning from them as well,” Crowfoot notes. The American agency emphasizes the usefulness of seeing different experiences: it serves to implement the most appropriate strategies in each context.

Read more about the meeting at local and national press:

• Setmanari Empordà: Prevenció d’incendis i lluita contra el canvi climàtic: Catalunya promou al món el model de cap de Creus i el Montgrí
• La Vanguardia: Catalunya promueve en el mundo el modelo de lucha contra los incendios de Cap de Creus i el Montgrí
• Diari de Girona: Prevenció d’incendis i lluita contra el canvi climàtic: Catalunya promou al món el model de cap de Creus i el Montgrí

Just a week ago Disfrutar was named Best Restaurant in the World according to The World’s 50 Best. Besides the immense joy for this recognition of the gastronomy, passion and honesty, we are also proud to have shared with them work and projects. In order to celebrate this huge achievement for our collegues, we wanted to recover the documentary that Cristina Jolonch and Samuel Aranda came to shoot at our home with chefs Oriol Castro, Eduard Xatruch and Mateu Casañas.

About four years ago, in the middle of the pandemic, Cristina Jolonch and Samuel Aranda were filming the documentary series “Sin Reservas” and they asked us if they could come and record it in the vineyards of Mas Marès. On that occasion, they wanted to do a chapter with Oriol Castro, Eduard Xatruch and Mateu Casañas, the chefs of the Compartir i Disfrutar restaurants. The proposal did not surprise us. In fact, we had been working together for a few years, Disfrutar and Espelt, in the production of an exclusive wine for their customers. The wine was a project born from the passion we share for viticulture and gastronomy. Thus, the documentary was an amazing oportunity to show the world our shared passion.

An unmissable documentary

The documentary ‘Sin Reservas’ of La Vanguardia’s Comer supplement pays tribute to a spirit of improvement of gastronomy professionals in times of pandemic through relevant figures of Catalan cuisine. Chefs such as Ferran Adrià, Martina Puigvert, Nandu Jubany, the Roca brothers, Carles Gaig, Paco Roca and Artur Martínez participate in there. Now, we get back to this episode starring the chefs of the Disfrutar restaurant Oriol Castro, Eduard Xatruch and Mateu Casañas and directed by the journalist Cristina Jolonch and the photographer Samuel Aranda, together with the Story & Co Films team. In a few minutes, the camera accompanies the chefs through a journey from Cadaqués to some of the most emblematic landscapes of Cap de Creus. Among all the landscapes, the vineyard could not be missing, in this case those of Mas Marès where we make the Anna Espelt wines.

In the video, the chefs express their close professional and personal relationship. In addition, they recall with complicity and humor their beginnings in the kitchen of El Bulli, located a few km from the vineyards of Mas Marès. The way of working that characterizes them is reflected in their interventions: honesty, constant dedication and passion for their job. Some adjectives that all the journalists have agreed to point out these days.

The Catalan Office of Climate Change publishes a guide to the results of the LIFE MIDMACC project with which we have collaborated in the last four years.

Since 2021 we have collaborated with LIFE MIDMACC project along with other territories in La Rioja, Aragon and Catalonia. The aim of this research is to analyze the benefits against climate change that land management with a mosaic landscape can have. Now, the Catalan Climate Change Office has released a guide, with the other partners of the project, which collects the main results and conclusions of the investigation.

In recent years, the increase in temperatures has been overwhelming, as we all know. In particular, the last year is the hottest on planet earth ever recorded. In addition, the mid-mountain areas of southern Europe, like our vineyards, are very sensitive to the impacts of climate change. The depopulation and abandonment of the traditional primary sector in recent years has led to reforestation and a homogenization of the landscape. At the same time, this has led to a decrease in environmental resilience and biodiversity.

Why did Mas Marès stop the fire?

With projects of recovery of the Mediterranean mosaic like the one we carry out at Mas Marès we try reverse this situation and achieve a more resilient landscape. During the February 2022 fires, mosaic agroforestry management was key to stopping the fire. MIDMACC LIFE studies corroborate that this management can also help prevent soil erosion, because it avoids overexploitation and the loss of biodiversity In addition it improves aspects that are so necessary today (and we believe also in the future) such as water resistance.

The guide Mesures d’adaptació al canvi climàtic a la muntanya mitjana mediterrània: una guia pràctica can be read online and is structured in three parts. The first deals with the analysis of the risks of the mid-Mediterranean mountains to the impacts of climate change. The second part reviews the results of the measures implemented (recovery of pastures, optimization/introduction of vines, forest management) in three areas of Aragon, Catalonia and La Rioja. Finally, in the last part, other adaptation measures are proposed for the mid-Mediterranean mountains.

Last Friday, Anna Espelt was on the special program of El Món a Rac1 from Llançà. With Anna Vallhonesta we talked about viticulture and traveling the world and returning to Born. Of what we have learned and of all the work we have left to do.

We are always glad to explain our work. Our land, the sea and the mountains, is what defines us and what marks the wines of the Empordà. Explaining ourselves and the territory means talking about our wines and understanding them a little more. We took a look at the why of the integral management between natural parks and vineyards and we talked about how we manage them to promote biodiversity in the lands we cultivate and about the sea, the tramuntana and the sun. Three key aspects that accompany us and that define our wines.

You can relive the interview and tell us about!

‘Empordà is definitely on the move. It is well past its flirtation with international vine varieties’

The Catalans seem to take conservation seriously. To the extent of removing an entire Club Med holiday village in order to restore the geologically unique north-eastern tip of the region to its natural state. Knocking down more than 400 buildings, which admittedly looked as integrated within the landscape as a caravan site, is surely taking rewilding to a new level.

This dramatic decision was inspired by the 1998 designation of Cap de Creus — the rocky outcrop in the hinterland of the seaside town of Cadaqués and the famous El Bulli restaurant — as a protected natural park. By 2010 the resort had been excised from the landscape and today the extraordinary rock formations of Tudela, where the Club once was, are again as nature intended.

On the August Saturday morning that I visited, the carefully landscaped trails were dotted with shiny Lycra as runners and cyclists made their determined way up them. My host was the energetic Anna Espelt, who runs her family’s Espelt wine operation, which has the most vineyards, 172ha, in the local appellation of Empordà (although the vast Perelada operation sells more wine).

Espelt’s tourist-friendly modern winery in Vilajuïga is based quite far inland and draws from vineyards in several different locations, but I feel Anna’s heart is most moved by those she was encouraged to plant in Cap de Creus, within sight of the sea. “I feel very good in this place,” she smiles as she takes in the view of the deep blue Mediterranean, the resort town of Roses in the distance and a bronze-age menhir that was unearthed by her father at the foot of her vineyards.

Before the phylloxera louse, which is fatal to vine roots, arrived back in 1879, Catalonia was wine country. By the turn of that century, a wine region with about 10,000ha of vines had been almost wiped out. Today, evidence of the 30,000km of painstakingly built stone terraces for vines can be seen on many a hillside. There are currently only 1,821ha of vines in production in this recently revived denomination.

It was partly to honour Cap de Creus’s viticultural legacy that Espelt planted vineyards there. The vine trunks were so spindly I thought they were only a handful of years old but they bear witness to how tough conditions here are for vines. The chilly tramuntana whistles through the mountains from the north, and the vines are buffeted by winds off the sea too. The park’s guardians are keen to encourage biodiversity. They see vines as more fire-resilient than many other plants in a landscape that is tinder-dry in a “normal” summer, let alone 2021 which, Espelt tells me, has so far seen just 153mm of rain.

The precision of that number is testament to the pain imposed by the drought but also Espelt’s scientific training. She was meant to be a biologist but in 2000 the opportunity to carry on her grandfather’s wine-producing legacy lured her back from California where she had been a cellarhand. She was very much thrown in at the deep end. Nineteen years ago, they planted 25ha of vines on Cap de Creus, partly to encourage others. Her first mistake, she says, was the decision to trellis the vines on wires rather than plant them as standalone bush vines, which would possibly have been more resilient and less thirsty. Nevertheless, the single-vineyard varietal wines they have yielded since 2017 are pretty impressive.

She has named them after places on Cap de Creus that have a special meaning for her. The white, made from Picapolla, as they call tangy Clairette grapes here, is called Pla de Tudela, after the beach where she particularly likes to swim. The red is made from Garnacha, a grape that is called Lledoner Negre here, and seems to be slimmed down and freshened up with each successive vintage. It’s called Cala Rostella after a pine-covered outcrop overlooking El Bulli.

These special bottlings are offered at the same price and I wondered if the Spanish market was ready to pay so much for a white wine. I was assured that the white sells out faster than the red, although admittedly it is made in smaller quantities. According to Espelt, “For many years we thought Empordà was a red wine area but now we learn we should focus on whites too — especially from the local varieties Lledoner Blanc [Grenache Blanc], Lledoner Roig [Grenache Gris] and Carinyena Blanc [Carignan Blanc].”

Espelt also covertly converted the family’s vineyards to organic viticulture and says she waited to break the news to her father, an agrochemical merchant, until after a bibulous Sunday lunch.

She pioneered the local renaissance of Grenache Gris, which can make arguably more interesting and perfumed wines than the pale-skinned Grenache Blanc. I had previously been rather unimpressed by the Carignan Blancs I had tasted in the Pyrenees in France, and one or two of the Empordà versions confirmed this. But La Vinyeta’s Microvins 2019, aged for 14 months in old French oak barrels and tasted at its stylish winery, won me over. It was dense, vibrant and had rather impressive grip. That said, both Josep Serra, co-founder of La Vinyeta, and Anna Espelt admitted that the grape doesn’t have that much actual flavour. Perhaps it will end up as a useful blending ingredient rather than as a varietal wine.

La Vinyeta, set up by Josep and Marta Serra in 2002, is another particularly interesting operation, very much informed by the fact that Josep’s brother is a designer in Barcelona. Microvins’ labels are a lesson in providing useful, geeky information in a clever, attractive way. And the team at La Vinyeta have really shown the locals how to entice visitors, with their outdoor café, sheep, cheeses and olive oil. La Vinyeta looks as though it belongs in California.

Empordà is very definitely on the move. It is well past its flirtation with international vine varieties and is now concentrating on the two most-planted varieties, both local: Lledoner Negre and Carinyena Negra, or Grenache and Carignan. These are the same varieties that dominate Priorat, the wine region that fetches Catalonia’s highest prices. Empordà is perhaps too small to be similarly appreciated, even though the average age of these Empordà vines, and their pale-skinned mutations, is impressively high. In a tasting of 73 Empordà wines recently, I was also delighted to see that some of the best wines included single-vineyard bottlings by one of the handful of co-ops — a welcome change from throwing everything into the same vat.

Some of the best wines of all are the strong, sweet ones, made in a wide range of ways and a number of them are completely stunning (after all, in terms of geology and climate, Empordà is a mirror image of Roussillon, home of Banyuls, on the other side of the Pyrenees). But I won’t waste space saying any more about them since I know how unfashionable such wonders are at the moment. I do hope their day will come. Together with their dry counterparts.

Exciting Empordà wines

I gave all these wines at least 17 points out of 20 and am very sad to see how few of them make it to the UK.

WHITES

• Clos d’Agon, Clos d’Agon 2018 13.5%
• Espelt, Pla de Tudela 2018 12.5%
  • €36.90 espeltviticultors.com, $75 European Cellars in the US

REDS

• Castillo de Perelada, Aires de Garbet 2017 14.5%
• Castillo de Perelada, Finca La Garriga 2016 14%
• Espelt, Cala Rostella 2018 and 2017 14.8%
  • €36.90 from espeltviticultors.com
• Masia Serra, Aroa 2018 14.5%
• Mas Vida, Vida Nua 2017 14%
• Roig Parals, Camí de Cormes Carinyena Vinyes Centenàries 14.5%
  • £60 Seckford, £70 Fine + Rare plus duty and VAT (2007)
• Sota els Àngles, Sota els Àngels 2019 13%
• La Vinyeta, Microvins Carinyena Negra Bota 2018 15%

SWEET

• Masia Serra, Ino NV 16%
• Vinyes dels Aspres, Bac de les Ginesteres NV 14.5%
  • £36.50 Albion Wine Shippers (2004)

Jancis Robinson. Published on Financial Times and on Jancis Robinson website in September 2021.

The magazine Woman publishes under the title “Mujeres de pura cepa, así son las grandes profesionales de las bodegas españolas” a review of the most influential women in the world of wine. We are very excited that our director, Anna Espelt, is one of them.