Corpinnat has just announced (*) their 23rd addition in the form of Mas Vilella, bringing the total number of wineries in the association to just shy of two dozen.
While the biggest news for Corpinnat this year was the move of Juvé & Camps from DO Cava to the association, the addition of Mas Vilella is quite important as well. It forms part of a new front in the group wherein there are members that aren’t coming from other, established DOs, but instead starting new projects that opt to produce under Corpinnat from very the start, emphasizing the strength in the core values of the association.
Mas Vilella started still wine production in 2015 when Albert Jané, after finding a good deal of success in his DO Montsant and DOQ Priorat wineries of Acústic and Ritme, decided to go back and build upon his roots. While Mas Vilella is a masia in the Penedès region that was built in the 16th century, the current vineyards were established in 1984 by Jané’s parents, Benjamí Jané and Maria Úbeda, now with a total of 11ha. Thus in terms of vineyard surface, a massive project this will never be, but that’s never been the point of it.
To date, I’ve been tasting the still wines that Jané has been producing as Mas Vilella, and they’ve been consistently good wines. Those produced from the native varieties of Sumoll as well as Malvasia de Sitges are some of the best in Penedès as people have been investing a great deal in returning to overlooked varieties of the past.
When asking Jané directly, he told me that the new sparkling wines under Mas Vilella will be a 100% Sumoll Rosé, along with one white that’s 80% Xarel·lo with the rest of the balance being Macabeu and Sumoll and another white that’s 100% Malvasia de Sitges.
It will be interesting to see where this next phase takes the winery as well as who will ultimately top out the two dozen wineries in Corpinnat as it’s clear their momentum isn’t stopping any time soon.
(*) The original announcement was set for today first thing, but despite the communication from the association being under embargo, one so-called journalist decided to publish early and be ‘first’ and thus made himself ‘last’…
