2019 Recaredo Corpinnat Terrers Brut Nature

WINEMAKER: Ton Mata
REGION: Penedès, SP
VARIETY: Xarel·lo, Macabeu, Parellada, Monastrell
VITICULTURE: Certified Biodynamic

Biodynamic. 57% Xarel·lo, 25% Macabeu, 17% Parellada, 1% Monastrell. Aged for 39 months on lees, Terrers is made from fruit grown in Recaredo’s own vineyards, all rooted in the calcareous soils of the Alt Penedès region. Each year, the blend can include fruit from as many as 65 small parcels drawn from Recaredo’s vines in Serral del Roure, Serral del Vell, Pedra Blanca, Marçaneta and the elevated Montpedrós vineyard at 455 metres. The base wines for Terrers are raised in tank, giving a super bright and fluid wine with textured stone fruit and bursts of citrus alongside an elegant palate marked by notes of herb and spice and creamy, textured lees-aging notes.

It’s not often you come by a sparkling wine producer where the quality and unique character of the wines, not to mention the quality of the farming, match the finest growers in Champagne. Yet that is precisely what you get with Recaredo. This is not to say Recaredo’s wines taste like Champagne. No, this is the Mediterranean; the grape varieties and soils are entirely different. Even so, Recaredo’s wines convey many of the virtues that draw many of us to fine grower Champagne: intensity of flavour, unique personality and sense of place. And, of course, they taste great, too.

The estate’s origins date back to 1924 when Josep Mata Capellades decided to build a cellar under his house and cultivate his own vineyard in Sant Sadurní d’Anoia, a village in the heart of Catalonia’s Alt Penedès region. He called his new winery Recaredo after his father, Recaredo Mata Figueres. From humble beginnings, Mata grew his holdings while forging his distinctive style, pioneering the production of brut nature sparkling wines, using oak barrels and crafting extended lees-aged wines with the Xarel·lo grape variety. Mata’s sons pressed ahead in their father’s footsteps, and today, it is his talented grandson, Ton Mata, who heads up the winery. 

Recaredo is a pioneer on many levels; not only was it the first producer in the Penedès region to be certified biodynamic (in 2010), but it uses exclusively estate-grown fruit, and all the grapes are picked by hand and vinified in its own cellars. Ton Mata’s philosophy has long been about crafting wines of place rather than conforming to a particular style. For this reason, Recaredo left the sprawling Cava D.O. in 2018 to join Corpinnat, an organisation of 12 quality-focused growers that functions like its own appellation. Including organic farming, Corpinnat’s manifesto includes arguably the strictest guidelines overseeing any sparkling production in the world. Crucially, the syndicate includes only wineries farming in the heart of Penedès—a region whose traditional-method sparkling wine history dates back to the end of the 19th century.