2023 Javi Revert Micalet Blanco
WINEMAKER: Javi Revert
REGION: Valencia, SP
VARIETY: Tortosi, Trepadell, Malvasia, Merseguera, Palomino
VITICULTURE: Organic/Biodynamic
Micalet sits on the north facing slope of the ‘Penya Forada’ mountain at 750m absl on a thin film of top soil over limestone. It was planted in 1948 with a collection of white varietals, Tortosi, Trepadell, Malvasia, Merseguera, Palomino. Roughly half the vineyard is ungrafted which ripen around two weeks earlier than the grafter section. Both picks are wholebunch pressed and settled for 12 hours before being transferred to concrete eggs for fermentation and ageing.
“If you’re not familiar with who Javi Revert is, you should be… I think he’s one of the young winemakers with the most potential, destined to make great wines.” – Luis Gutierrez
Javi Revert Viticultor began over a decade ago when a young Javi, fresh out of wine making university in Valencia was walking in the mountains above his hometown of Font de la Figuera with his grandfather. They stumbled across an old, terraced vineyard set high on the mountainside. It had been abandoned for decades and was completely overgrown by wild vegetation. Javi’s grandfather mentioned, almost haphazardly, that the vineyard had originally been planted by Javi’s great-grandfather and he himself had helped harvest it as a child and young man. In the intervening years viticulture had moved down from the mountains onto trellises on the flat, alluvial plains and the band of terraced vineyards that had once wrapped around the mountains above the town had all been subsumed by the forest. It’s a story that occurs in many regions of Spain, most notably the Gredos, but what had happened in Figuera had gone one step further, the chance to recover the old vines had slipped away and the great, traditional sites of the area had to be cleared and replanted again from scratch.
This was the start of a slow burning project for Javi who gradually cleared the forest, rebuilt the stone terraces, and replanted. At the same time he sought out the oldest surviving vineyards he could find, most notably ‘Micalet’ which was planted in 1948 and was being kept alive by an old, retired, farmer. Initially these vineyards provided the raw material for Javi to replant his own sites via massale selection with a traditional mixture of native varietals; the rare Arcos, Merseguera, Verdil, Tortosi, Trepadell, Bonicaire along with more common Malvasia, Garnacha and Monastrell. Eventually he took over farming them as well as adding old vine single vineyard wines to his range and a little old vine depth to the multi-vineyard ‘Sensal.’ At the same time, he worked in a series of Mediterranean wineries, honing his winemaking skills and bankrolling the development of his own project. It was Javi who was the initial winemaker at Celler del Roure where he worked for six years, he’s also consulted for wines like Finca Sandoval.