Albet i Noya, El Corral Cremat Brut Nature, Penedès 2011 (12.5%)

The Catalonian sparkling wine scene is in full ferment at present, with a huge range of groundbreaking wines finding their way to market – though a glance at the vintage date on this wine shows that this is a revolution that has been in the making for more than a decade now. The wine is pale gold and fine-beaded. That heady scent of dry grasses, cream, herbs and wild flowers could only come from Xarel.lo, and only from Catalonia, too, with all its Mediterranean distinctiveness. The wine is mouthfilling, dry and structured, as perfumed on the tongue as it is in the glass, and ideally suited not only as a head-turning aperitif but as a food wine too.

‘For me, this wine is a way of coming full circle,’ says owner-winemaker Josep Maria Albet i Noya of this debut vintage of Corral Cremat, a 100% Xarel·lo long-aged sparkling wine. ‘I decided to make it in 2011, thinking we would start to sell it 10 years later, on the day of my retirement,’ he explains. ‘Although I turned 65 in January and increasingly delegate to my son Martí, I’m still working, above all in the vineyards – the priority being a project developing indigenous varieties resistant to fungus and climate change.’

A pioneering vision has characterised Albet i Noya since its birth in 1903, as exemplified by it becoming Spain’s first producer of organic wines in the late 1970s, albeit at the behest of a Scandinavian importer.

‘Corral Cremat – we only made 1,600 bottles – comes from a very special 1.2ha vineyard,’ says Josep Maria. ‘In a small valley between forests at almost 400m, it enjoys a privileged location. Oriented north to south, it receives a few hours of sun first thing in the morning and a few hours at the end of the evening. This notable thermal contrast leads our grapes to ripen slowly and maintain perfect acidity on the vine, allowing great, long-aged sparkling wines to be made, and illustrating the landscape and the passion with which we undertake our work.’