Articles

Tasting Parés Baltà’s future, from 2021

by  |  07-09-2022

In cleaning up my tasting notes, I came across this, en primeur tasting of wines that I did in the early spring at Parés Baltà with the winemaker, Marta Casas. I believe I was up... more »

Five wines from Penedès to know right now

by  |  30-06-2022

Following is a curated selection of wines derived from the most-recent DO Penedès report. I’d hate to refer to them as “picks for the summer” but admittedly, four out of the five wines are whites... more »

In The Glass: Raventós i Blanc – Textures de Pedra 2016

by  |  27-11-2020

I’ve never been a tremendously big fan of blanc de noir Champagnes. Plop! goes the sound of each and every monocle in the room falling into every glass of Bollinger being sipped. But I feel... more »

Six wines from Penedès to know right now

by  |  26-06-2020

As is often the case, we’d just passed May 40th when summer suddenly exploded out of nowhere here in Spain. It seems that overnight we went from chilly nights and massive, biblical rains (that have... more »

DO Penedès & ‘native’ reds

by  |  14-01-2020

In simpler times, if one were drinking a white wine from Spain, it would most likely have been a white from Penedès. This shouldn’t come as much of a shock given that 80% of the... more »

Natural etc. Can Sumoi

by  |  01-03-2019

Europe is in the “Recuperation Era” of winemaking and by that I mean that there is still a lot of recuperation of old varieties, vineyards, and winemaking methods taking place to produce the modern, evolving... more »

When “natural” comes a knockin’. Mascorrubí Heretat 1297 – Annat 2017

by  |  09-07-2018

Sometime back I was sent a couple of wines from a local region that actually had “natural” writ large upon the label. This was a new one to me as anyone producing wines of this... more »

In The Glass: Jané Ventura – Sumoll 2013

by  |  12-03-2016

Sumoll is a rather old, odd variety. Despite being native to the region of Catalonia, it was disregarded in general and especially so after Spain entered the EU in 1986 and local varieties were seen... more »

Rebellious Penedès: “Unrated”

by  |  28-01-2016

This article originally ran on Harpers but, given space restrictions was nearly half of the original in length. Here I present it in its entirety. The concept of rebellion in wine typically conjures up images... more »