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Recaredo, “Serral del Vell” Brut Nature

Like it or not, every sparkling wine you see that isn’t from Champagne is going to be judged according to how it compares to Champagne. Sure, French Champagne is the world’s sparkling wine Gold Standard, but that doesn’t mean there aren’t other wines, made in the same methodology but in a different place, that don’t merely “compete” with Champagne but eclipse it.

Today’s meticulously hand-crafted, vintage-dated showstopper from Recaredo is a wine any Champagne house would be proud to call their own—but you can bet they’d charge a lot more for it. Recaredo, founded in 1924, is one of the founding members of the recently formed Corpinnat growers’ association, which was created as a way to distinguish its producers, and wines, from what might be called “Big Cava.” Corpinnat is a compound word meaning “heart of Penedès,” and refers to a subzone of the Penedès DO the member-growers believe is its greatest terroir. Recaredo and their contemporaries didn’t just distance themselves from the highly variable Cava designation but established a rigorous set of standards designed to place their hand-crafted, organically farmed wines among the world’s elite. The single-vineyard “Serral del Vell” is a towering achievement and the quintessential Recaredo wine: bone-dry, biodynamically farmed, and handmade all the way through the méthode Champenoise process. To step into the Recaredo cellars is to travel back in time, and we are immensely grateful that they exist to preach the gospel of Spanish sparkling wine with as much elegance and integrity as they do.

The Recaredo estate is based in the municipality of Sant Sadurní d’Anoia, in the heart of Cava’s ancestral home. The estate has been in continuous operation by the Mata family since its founding in 1924, and has garnered a reputation as the ultimate standard-bearer for artisanal sparkling wines in Alt Penedès. Recaredo has been central in the efforts to distinguish the region’s hand-crafted wines from the bulk-produced Cavas that flood international markets. It’s no accident that their story, and their membership in the Corpinnat association, mirrors the grower-producer uprising in Champagne; the Recaredo team also emphasizes terroir-specificity, single vintages, labor-intensive viticulture, and long aging to produce truly luminous bottles of unmistakable origin.

Recaredo’s emphatically ‘anti-Cava’ philosophy begins in their 65 hectares of dry-farmed (non- irrigated) vineyards. Each immaculately tended plot is a thriving ecosystem in harmony with the surrounding forests, biodynamically farmed with such success that an ordinary walk through the rows feels like a communion with nature. Serral del Vell is a precise and powerful love letter to the unique terroir of Alt Penedès. Each sip confirms the region’s ability to rival Chablis in capturing limestone essence from the intensely calcareous high-altitude plateau—focused, intense, and pure.

The Recaredo team takes extreme pains to do everything by hand. Each grape is hand-plucked before transport to the original cellar where Recaredo has made and stored each bottle since 1924. Their vast subterranean caves glitter with bottles stacked to the ceiling, all stoppered with natural cork for their secondary fermentations. Highly skilled team members hand-riddle the bottles as they rest on their lees for a minimum of three years, turning each with movements as precise as the ticking of a Swiss watch. Recaredo religiously eschews dosage (sugar addition), as the healthy, sun-drenched fruit needs no additions to shine. Finally, the wines are manually disgorged at cellar temperature instead of the standard process of freezing the bottlenecks to remove spent yeast cells—the final step before they’re corked anew and sent to discerning collectors the world over.

The 2011 Serral del Vell is just beginning to relax into its fullest potential; give it a few minutes of air in the glass to unfurl completely. It’s notes of quince-jam and red apple peel compliment an astonishingly taut and linear palate, almost totally untouched by time. The effervescence is ultrafine and wonderfully persistent, softening an otherwise fierce thread of minerality that clings to your teeth long after you swallow. Marzipan and vanilla bean balance crushed oysters and yellow plums, a titillating mélange made all the more enticing because the bottle disappears so darn quickly. Slow yourself down with an enormous Catalonian-inspired cheese board or some gougères, but don’t be surprised when the wine remains firmly the center of attention. These are genre-defying bubbles that must be tasted to be believed.

Recaredo, “Serral del Vell” Brut Nature Fashion

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