To find where "ambrosia" the food/drink of the gods comes from a visit to
Mas Estela is needed. Not only do they produce wines which get the highest ratings (
Parker 93 points etc) but the location of the winery is sublime. Tucked in a valley within the
Cap de Creus natural park and only 3 kms from the
Meditteranean sea with it's moderating influence and near the charming village of
Selva de Mar make this a highly desirable place to get to know.
Access is not easy and this is not a place to turn up to uninvited as it is family run by Didier and Nuria and their sons who are always busy but very welcoming when organised in advance. Nuria showed us around and speaks English as well as
Catalan, Spanish and French so some way to communicate their exceptional story will be found.
They came here in 1988 and bought a large ruin with some 20ha of valley and scrub land with steep slopes on either side. They had the vision to believe that the place was ideal for planting vines but first they needed somewhere to live. Didier is an architect and extremely practical man and he not only designed a new house from the ruins of the old but proceeded to build most of it himself as well as the Bodega afterwards which stands next door.
Nuria took us on a tour of the vineyard and as we climbed up the sides of the hill we saw all the work that has gone into clearing, leveling and planting the terraces with varieties like syrah, monastrell and garnatxa gris to complement the garnatxa and cariñena and muscat they already have. The other important point to note is that this is an organic vineyard, and also they apply the biodynamic principles which look at the cycles of the moon to interact with the soil or when to work on the vines or add natural fertilizer. This means that the environment is not polluted by any type of chemical and as such the whole variety and diversity of organic, insect and wildlife is preserved and encouraged creating a truly healthy environment. During this time of the year with all the wild flowers, fennel, wild asparagus and flowering yellow broome walking here is a real pleasure. The soil on the slopes is poor and made up mainly of brown slate which means that the young plants need to work hard and put down deep roots to look for any moisture they can. Eventually the roots could go down 5-6 metres and that is when you will really get the mineral flavours so much appreciated by wine lovers. The only animal that is not welcome, at least not in the vineyard, is the wild boar which roam these mountains and that can strip entire rows in hours when the grapes are ripe and ready for harvesting.
The next part of the visit is a little more technical: where the grapes come in to the Bodega, how they are destemmed and crushed into grape juice which is cooled to 8ºC from the 24ºC or so when they arrive to stop any fermentation, the filtering and then storing in the stainless steel tanks where they will undergo the first controlled fermentation to convert all the sugar to
alcohol.
All this is thirsty work and when we are led down into the storage cellar where there are over 200
oak barrels with their precious content slowly maturing we are given glasses and the tasting begins with the
Mas Estela white wine. This is a blend of
Garnatxa gris (white grenache) and
Muscat with its flowery aromas. From here we move on to the first red,
Quindals 05, a mix of mainly red
Garnatxa and a small amount of both
Syrah and
Cariñena and up to 12 months in oak.This is a fruity wine with lots of body and just screams out for foods like the local cheeses and sausage with "pa amb tomaquet"soaked in olive oil-a meal in itself. Then comes the
Mas Estela 01 which is more elegant and complex with notes of the wild herbs we saw and smelled on our walk around the vines earlier. From here we were told to bring our glasses since we were going to taste direct from the tanks the 06
Quindals and
Mas Estela. They were truly delicious and even though the
Mas Estela red will now spend about 18 months in french oak to add body and complexity this wine will be great when it finally is released. The tasting finished off (and us) with a visit to the oldest part of the house and the cellars carved out of the rock below the main house (the old ruins) where the 500 litre casks of sweet
garnatxa and
moscatel reside. Here they operate a solera system which means that the wines we are tasting are nearly 20 yrs old and are light, tangy and wonderful.
As you might imagine when we emerged into the light we were all feeling pretty good but in need of adding some food to the alcohol. So after saying our farewells to a fabulous tour by Nuria with even a guest appearance by Didier and their model like son Didac, we headed down the road 3 kms to
Port de la Selva and had lunch sitting outside with another bottle of the white wine we had first tried a few hours before while evaluating the pros and cons of setting up a bodega and starting an adventure that has still not finished at
Mas Estela!
Labels: barcelona, Bodega, Garnatxa, Girona, Grenache, Mas Estela, Muscat, Spanish wine, Wine, winery
A very pleasant way to pass a few hours with friends is to find a perfect location such as San Bartomeu, a country house near Banyoles, and have Linda give a tasting of Spanish wines.
We started as the sun was going down but the weather was balmy and sitting outside around a big table with a glass in our hands and Linda explaining about the various regions, styles and grape varieties was a wonderful experience.
We tasted 6 wines in all starting with an Albariño white and moving on to 5 reds all from different regions. These included classic areas like Rioja and Ribera, up and coming Priorat and unknowns such as Jumilla and Empordà. Complemented with some local cheeses , bread and olive oil and there was little need for the BBQ programmed afterwards.
