My AccountCatalonia
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Celler Cesca Vicent Lo Piot Priorat 2018
$40.00Add to cartA great value wine from a 5th generation Spanish producer. A real delight.
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Celler Pinol L’Avi Arrufi Blanc 2021
$58.00Add to cartPiñol makes very cool wines. They have a deep respect for ancient vines from cherished vineyards and a balanced but minimalist approach to winemaking in Terra Alta, one of the most exciting emerging regions of Spanish wine. This wine is 100% Garnacha Blanca, honoring the ancestral home of the grape. This wine is incredibly small in production coming from a single vineyard wiht 60+ year old vines; they only produce 300 cases each year. It’s vibrant with mineral driven citrus and orchard fruit offset by honeysuckle, ginger, and quinine. A touch of bitterness on the palate plays alongside the smoky minerality before a long finish with lingering white flowers. Pair with risottos, fatty fish, or white meats.
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Enric Soler ‘nun 2022
$115.00Add to cartFor twenty straight years, former Spanish champion sommelier Enric Soler has made wines that read like love letters. They are a public expression that Xarel-lo is worth time, effort, and attention. His zen-like focus on the grape has led to nicknames (The Iron Knight of Xarel-lo) and resounding accolades.
Xarel-lo is typically blended with Parellada and Macabeo in Catalunyan cavas, but in the right hands, it exhibits the balance and structure of the world’s great white wines.
Soler works his grandfather’s 78-year-old Xarel-lo vineyards (Vinyas del Taus) and a younger but more rural vineyard (Espenyalluchs) biodynamically with stunning results. His grandfather’s old bush-trained vines are surrounded by vibrant ground cover and lovingly tended. He waxes poetically about these vines saying that they are like us and that old people and vineyards need special attention and care. While the Espenyalluchs vineyard is younger, it’s easy to see the potential of the clay soils in this remote, high-altitude (400m) corner of Catalunya.
Like his farming, there is elegance, balance, and intention in every step of his winemaking process. He harnesses rich acidity and transforms the firm phenolics of the Xarel-lo grapes into character and structure through minimal but precise cellar treatments.
The resulting wines are concentrated and complex, aromatic with bright herbs and rich citrus, vibrant and energetic but still elegant with the structure to stand up to long cellar aging.
This 78-year-old plot has been farmed biodynamically since 2005 and produces Xarel-lo that, under Soler’s hands, is easily mistaken for excellent white Burgundy. For Nun, the grapes are hand-picked and sorted before being fermented with native yeasts in a blend of old (two-year-old) and new French oak. Aging takes place with zero battonage over eight months. Only 240 cases are produced.
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Enric Soler Xarel-lo Espenyalluchs 2022
$95.00Add to cartFor twenty straight years, former Spanish champion sommelier Enric Soler has made wines that read like love letters. They are a public expression that Xarel-lo is worth time, effort, and attention. His zen-like focus on the grape has led to nicknames (The Iron Knight of Xarel-lo) and resounding accolades.
Xarel-lo is typically blended with Parellada and Macabeo in Catalunyan cavas, but in the right hands, it exhibits the balance and structure of the world’s great white wines.
Soler works his grandfather’s 78-year-old Xarel-lo vineyards (Vinyas del Taus) and a younger but more rural vineyard (Espenyalluchs) biodynamically with stunning results. His grandfather’s old bush-trained vines are surrounded by vibrant ground cover and lovingly tended. He waxes poetically about these vines saying that they are like us and that old people and vineyards need special attention and care. While the Espenyalluchs vineyard is younger, it’s easy to see the potential of the clay soils in this remote, high-altitude (400m) corner of Catalunya.
Like his farming, there is elegance, balance, and intention in every step of his winemaking process. He harnesses rich acidity and transforms the firm phenolics of the Xarel-lo grapes into character and structure through minimal but precise cellar treatments.
This is a tiny, young vine plot (paraje) made up of cuttings from the Nun vineyard, grafted onto old Parellada rootstock over a decade ago, and planted at an altitude of 400m where ripeness is not guaranteed on pure clay. Fermented and aged on the lees for eight months in four and five-year-old French oak barrels.
The wine is energetic, with much of the same herbal quality as the older vine wines, but with a dynamic freshness that can only be attributed to youth, elevation, and cooler climate. Only 240 cases are produced.
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Huguet De Can Feixes Penedes Blanc Seleccio 2021
$27.00Add to cart -
Josep Foraster La Moto 2023
$22.00Add to cartA certified organic and hand harvested blend of Trepat and Garnatxa Peluda. It’s juicy, aromatic, and spicy but also tastes like red berries and plum with hints of wild herbs.
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Raventos i Blanc Conca Del Riu Anoia Blanc de Blancs 2021
$28.00Add to cartA serious sparkling wine from serious winemakers. The famity behind this wine cared so much about their product they left the Cava DO because it wasn’t stringent enough and had people looking down on the serious wines they make (even if they do still sell them at a lower price point). This is a great option for parties and a day of entertaining.
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Vitícola Sileo, Montsant Sileo 2022
$27.00Add to cartIt’s often easy to overlook Montsant for the more well known Priorat, but we think that’s a mistake. The ring of hills that surround Priorat produce more subtle, elegant Grenaches that we can’t get enough of. We love Montsant because the elevation not only leaves the grapes with a notably higher acidity but with a freshness that comes from air moving around the hills as opposed to the valley floor. The Sileo (Latin for to be quiet) is a meditation on excellent and affordable Grenache from the family behind AT Roca and Anima Mundi who source organic grapes from calcareous soils. The wine is grippy with beautiful, lifted strawberry rhubarb pie that’s framed by flint. Delightful, expressive, and very fun.
