RESERVA PARTICULAR BRUT NATUR GRAN RESERVA 2007 by RECAREDO

Wine description

Terroir

Vinification

Awards

Criticism

Luis Gutiérrez, Robert Parker's critic for Spain, writes:

"The 2007 Reserva Particular cuvée, currently on the market, comes from a great vintage in the region, especially for Xarello - even though it is a blend of 64% Macabeo and 36% Xarello, I think this is one of the best vintages, at least in recent times, along with 2001 and 2004. It comes from three different vineyards and is always a little more mature and developed, and in this vintage it combines power with freshness, as in the best vintages. The 2007 vintage was dry and the Recaredo vineyards yielded 33.5 hectolitres per hectare, although the designation of origin allows up to 88 hectolitres per hectare this year. The wine has 12% alcohol and an extremely low pH (2.96), which means very healthy acidity. The Xarello was fermented in oak barrels and the Macabeo in stainless steel. The wine was bottled in April 2008 for ageing with yeasts and disgorged nine years and nine months later (117 months). The long maturation has ensured a great complexity of flavours, a fine and elegant reduction and a very integrated palate with very small bubbles that give it a creamy texture. Most of the best vintages are cool and damp. This was not the case in 2007; it is rather average, but the results are still great. They produced 12,220 numbered bottles. They did not produce the 2005 vintage (they switched from 2004 to 2006) because they consider Macabeo to be very important and will not produce the wine if it is not up to standard.

Recaredo continues to work to include the best terroirs in their wines, and the Brut de Brut has been renamed Serral del Vell, the name of the vineyard from which the grapes for this Brut come. This change was introduced with the 2008 vintage, and at the same time the wine was included in the Paraje Calificado category, an official Cava designation category created for wines from specific vineyards that fulfil certain quality conditions. Recaredo fulfils these conditions and even exceeds them: the winery is 100% certified for organic and biodynamic cultivation, uses indigenous grapes, harvests by hand, matures for at least 30 months on the lees in the bottle and uses a natural cork for all its wines (all single harvest and brut nature wines are certified for 15 years). I tasted an amazing selection of sparkling wines, including one of the best vintages of Turó d'en Mota (their flagship) and a rare, unique 1996 full of complexity and Roquefort-like notes on the nose and palate. As a side note, winemaker Ton Mata started a small family project in 2013 to produce natural sparkling wines with his wife. The first vintages were fermented in Recaredo, and now they are building their own small winery."