Since we can remember, we have seen cows in Albera and Cap de Creus. Changes in the contemporary world have made transhumance more complicated. The beasts, however, still need to change their minds when winter comes.

For years, we have had an agreement for these cows from Ripollès to graze in our vineyards in Cap de Creus. They win with good pastures: Xavi, the shepherd, tells us that if it rains there will be good grass (hopefully it will be so and it will rain soon!).

The whole environment of Mas Marés also gains with an enriched ecosystem. Thanks to its presence, we help the mosaic, this Mediterranean landscape that is a reflection of the variety of ecosystems and biodiversity. With the cows, one more element is added so that the different ecosystems that coexist in this space create synergies between them. Cows are important because they make for more open space, which is great for other animals to come, such as the little kestrel, which we’ve already told you about. They also reduce flammable biomass and therefore reduce the risk of fire, bringing more organic matter to the soil, thus closing a virtuous circle. If you go up to the Pic de l’Àliga or Pla de Gates you can find the cows grazing quietly again and sunbathing and wind, and hopefully it will rain soon. Tell us if you were able to greet them, did you see them?

Dry stone is part of our landscape, one of the reasons we rebuild dry stone walls. Dry Stone Week takes place from 19th to 28th November. More than 100 activities organized throughout the territory of the Catalan Countries to raise awareness of this cultural heritage.

This week will take place the 2nd edition of Dry Stone Week. More than 100 activities that vindicate, update and put these spaces of popular architecture and biodiversity at the center. The conference, organized by various organizations throughout the territory, is a good starting point if you want to know more about these rural buildings.

Dry stone is an ancient technique of separating fields, but also of gaining cultivation space on uneven ground. In addition, over the years we have seen that the vineyards that had dry stone walls nearby were more resilient and with more biodiversity, as the holes between stones are natural dens for all kinds of insectivorous species and small reptiles, amphibians, birds. In Mas Marés we have rebuilt more than 3,000 m of dry stone walls because they are part of our landscape and our heritage, but above all because they are a refuge for a rich and powerful ecosystem.

Let’s participate in the Seca de la Pedra Seca, there are more than 40 scheduled events, more than 20 trainings and more than 30 disclosure acts about the Catalan Countries. You can also come to meet us and learn first hand why we rebuild the walls of dry stone.

You have the calendar of activities and the location map on the Dry Stone Week website. Don’t miss it!

La Vella is our white Carignan of old vineyards, planted in 1919. This wine is the culmination of a process of observation, research and study on the local varieties of the Empordà.

Some time ago, with Dylan Grigg we were sorting out all the vineyards we had, analyzing them, rediscovering forgotten varieties and deciding that we could never leave them nameless again. From this exhaustive study came the library of varieties, and hence our idea of making wines that would recover them, like this white Carignan.

La Vella is a tribute to the winegrowers who have worked hard to preserve these vines for a long time, despite the low yield, although the trend for many years was to uproot and put varieties that gave more grapes. Winegrowers such as Àngel Poch, who with perseverance and love for the land have made it possible for La Vella to become a reality today.

Thank you all for working the land with love for so many years!

You can now order La Vella in our shop online.

We started a yeast in the vineyard by the sea, in Mas Marés. This fermented juice is what we will put in the vat where the grapes from this vineyard will go. The idea is to reproduce the yeasts already present in the skin of the grapes so that it is the main one in the wine.

If we want to make a wine in which both the grapes and the yeast are only from a certain vineyard, the only way is to cultivate them in the vineyard. If we do not do so, it is possible that the yeasts that appear are not only those of the grapes, but also those present in the cellar. It’s kind of like a primary yeast for bread but of and for wine. This yeast will help to ensure that there is already an active yeast population that is imposed during fermentation. Growing this crop makes it easier for the fermentation to go well. This is a very effective technique in small volumes of wine which we have already applied on other occasions.

We peel the grapes. We choose the ones that are whole and beautiful and have no cracks or are becoming raisins. We crush them until no spheres are left and all the juice comes out. We put them with all the juice they have taken out in a jar that we leave badly closed. That’s the way to let come out the carbonic when the fermentation begins.

We would like to be able to do it in Pardells, in Rabós, too;) We will tell you.

In the middle of the harvest we observe the vineyards. They have come this far, with all their might, in spite of the drought, in spite of the wind, in spite of the risk of fire this summer. We are very grateful to be able to work and harvest their fruits. We thanks nature to be able to take care of them.

The vegetable covers are yellow, the color of the straw dominates, if it were not the leaves and underneath, the grapes that we now harvest, we would say that the earth cannot bear fruit like this. Plants teach us slow adaptation to changing climatic conditions, resilience is their most authentic way of life. Our obsession is to make their future easy, creating spaces so that the water does not carry away the soils, redoing the dry stone walls, using drip irrigation very occasionally.

We keep on going on harvest ????

To determine the optimal degree of ripeness of the grapes, we carry out periodic checks in the vineyards. Every day, a few grains to taste, observe and analyze.

Today we checked the ripeness and maturity of the white grenache vineyards, in Vilajuïga, the first to ripen and harvest. We repeat steps in stages to see small variations and find the best time to harvest. In this case the seeds are not yet woody, that is, green. In addition, a slight sour taste indicates that we still have a little to go before we can start, but we are already close. After collecting the samples, we press the grains, and taste the must. Here we will have more data on acidity, sugar, taste. As if that wasn’t enough, we finally also analyze this must. The scientific data usually ends up corroborating the conclusions we had already reached tasting, but we have to split hairs to be perfect!

After today’s tastings, everything is an evidence that the harvest is very close. At this point, after all the efforts and joys that the vineyard gives us, we are very happy to start harvesting 🙂

Verol  is when the grape begins to take on the color it has when it is ripe. It is one of the most beautiful changes of the vine. It should be fast and uniform. Moving from the color with which all the berries are born, green, to all the shades of the grape we know. It is a key ripening process for the grapes. In our vineyards we often see the logical evolution considering altitude and latitude, they are a few meters apart. The variations are subtle, but we find them there and they surprise us every year.

Thus, we have make an effort to deeply observe in order to describe you all the variety between terroirs in this post. The first to verol are those of the plain, black and white grenache, macabeos and other grapes that we use for younger wines. They are the origin of the winery, where we started and from where we have been learning what we know.

Then we have the mountain vineyards of Vilajuïga, granite enclave, rugged terraprim full of aromatic plants. They were planted between 1998 and 2002, and much of it was Anna’s final master’s project. We started to climb the mountain again to rediscover the authentic Empordà terroirs. They are 25 hectares completely ecological, of black varieties, where the Mediterranean ones predominate. It was also our first experience when rebuilding terraces, so important to prevent erosion in our climate of heavy rains.

Later, it is the turn of Rabós, very old vineyards, between 30 and more than a hundred years old, with varieties such as carinyenes, black, white and red Grenache. Old and wise vineyards, always planted on slates. These are very low yields, which give complexity and power. We looked for vineyards that taught us who we are, who we were, and we found these gems.

The last estate is Mas Marés, vineyards by the sea, in Cap de Creus. They are ecological grenache, picapoll and monestrell in an agroforestry project that aims to recover the Mediterranean mosaic by combining vineyards with cork oaks, pastures and steppes. Here we find granites, north wind and sea wind, the ideal sum to make very Mediterranean wines: complex, intense and delicate.

It is said that in variety there is wealth and we add that also a path for learning!

Soils are one of the most precious elements of a vineyard, perhaps the most important. The land and its wealth are essential to have happy vineyards that produce good fruit. But not only. It is also in the soils where it all begins, where the roots settle. If we have well-structured soils we will have more microorganisms and more macrobiota and therefore more life. Living soils will help us make a better wine. Green roofs or the reconstruction of dry stone walls are two of the active measures we have taken for this purpose. Today World Soil Conservation Day we remember that caring for our soils gives us many benefits in viticulture. Moreover, they are the first stone so that the earth in twenty, thirty, forty years from now, is more structured, needs less water and our work with him is more harmonious. In our Mediterranean landscape, with torrential rains and intense droughts, good soil management is essential in order to  to have a sustainable and wealthfull agriculture in the future.  It has benn I while since we became part of the European project MIDMACC, which aim is to study the effects of climate change on the vineyard and how we can adapt to them. The results we hope will be revealing. We will keep you informed!

Since we know that the climate change is almost irreversible we do not stop asking us what we can do to adapt us in. Of course the world is in a climatic emergency, whose effects stil we are not aware of.

The MIDMACC research project, part of the European program Europa Life, has been working in our vineyards for more than a year to find answers to a question we often ask ourselves: are we doing everything we can to cushion climate change? Mid-mountain vineyards, such as those we have in Mas Marés, can be a good tool to prevent erosion and therefore influence the consequences of climate change. Researchers have placed small machines in the vineyards to find out how the water moves in our vineyards, because this gives us clues about soil erosion. These data will help us determine the differences, at the environmental level, between working in gobelet-trained or in trellis.

Collecting data is a very subtle way to open a window into the future. We hope to be able to tell you all the fruits.

When spring breaks out, it’s a good time to graft. We’ve had some grafts for a few months now. The story comes from a dreamy vineyard, because year after year the wine that comes out of it is good, very good. We’ve visited the vineyard many times and it’s beautiful. We’ve been in love with it for a long time and we finally decided. We asked the winemaker for wood to reproduce. Now we can have a little bit of it at home and we can’t be happier.

The vines we grafted were from Merlot, from the vineyards that are closest to the winery. Adding these local varieties of old vines we created a frankenstein vine, as Miquel Hudin would say, but for us they are daisies next to Lake Léman. Having vines replanted with local varieties has become one of our main goals to reduce the environmental impact of our work. We have been observing the behavior of plants in the face of climate change for some time and we have found that those that are best adapted to it are those of local varieties.

We know that today’s work will bear fruit in the near future. It won’t be until a few years from now that this vineyard will give us wood to reproduce more vines, and we’ll also have to wait a while to make wine. A long journey to achieve sustainable viticulture, with vines that need less water and more resistant to climatic conditions in the area. A path that is also a tribute to the legacy of the viticulturists who preceded us: this encounter, the vineyard that we fell in love with some time ago, the wood that a good viticulturist, who has cared for it for so long, has offered us. All in all, a gift for the future of our landscape and the winemaking tradition of the Empordà.