Farming  : Organic | Biodynamic

Winemaking : Hand-Picked Grapes | Native Yeast Fermentation | Unfined | Unfiltered | Vegan | No Added Sulfites

Region : Catalonia, Spain

Grape : Macabeo | Xarel-lo

Alcohol by Volume : 11%

Notes:

Cartoixà Vermell (the pinkish-hued version of Xarello) grapes that are organically grown over calcareous clay soils and hand harvested in the Baix Penedès. Macerated with the skins for a few days, and is a touch of that rose/orange color, you can classify it as either. Fermented with indigenous yeasts in stainless steel tanks and ages on the lees in tank for several months. Bottled unfined, unfiltered, and zero SO2. This 2020 vintage is our favorite in a long time too, just a tad of that funk but bright enough to keep things elevated.

Massimo Marchiori and Antonella Gerosa are the Italian couple behind Partida Creus. They settled in the Massís de Bonastre in the Baix Penedés around the year 2000. There they started farming all kinds of local foodstuffs but had trouble finding wines made in the same style so they started making their own, recovering old vines of local grape varietals. In most cases, the vineyards were close to abandoned. Whenever they find a new vineyard, they’ll go to the nearby town, find out who the owner is and approach them to buy or at least farm the vineyard, organically of course. People think they’re crazy for doing this as they are very old, low yielding vineyards and in most cases, obsolete grape varietals. Some have been disqualified from D.O. for lack of color, as was the case with Sumoll, others were never even accepted. Now they’re known as the crazy Italians making incredible natural wines with the grapes that all of the locals had written off in exchange for the more “international” varietals.