The Calcareous Connection: An incredible Xarelo that spreads the elegance of Garraf across the planet

Today in the glass we have a unique and enviable project. Single Vineyards Collectors are three friends who seek out old vines that are abandoned or don't have a caretaker. They recover and care for them. Today's magnificent Xarel lo is from a vineyard in the Macizo del Garraf DO, surrounded by a dry stone path, which everyone knows as Mas Marroquí.

Nacho Vicente is one of the architects of wine. A man with an innate talent who has worked hard for the vineyard. He has taken the Wine-Set courses up to the 3rd. Yours truly is taking the 3rd (with the cheerful companions of the We eat We did the 2nd one), and it's a recommendation I'd like to make to all wine lovers: it's a course that teaches you how to relate, how to taste, and gives you a panoramic view of this world we love. In Catalonia, the courses are run by Rack and Return. Nacho has been organizing the Vilanova wine fair for over 15 years. "When is the wine fair?" he asked once when he went to live there. And since there wasn't one, he set it up. The other two pillars of the project? Fredi Bassal, whom he met working at Vinus y Brindis, who has contributed the La Ricofa vineyard to the team, and María Girón (what a beautiful surname), who is from Jerez de la Frontera. I always tell people from Jerez that they should pay for being from that unique and special wine region. María has always worked with wineries, and now lives in Catalonia, for today's wine.

"I look for the purity of Xarel·lo, that of the variety, in a specific area, the soils of the Garraf massif, which are unique." One day, at a tasting in Gramona, I heard Nacho (I love the way he works) talk about the "limestone connection." He says, and he's right, that there are three areas with calcium carbonate that form this connection. "Champagne and Chablis with the famous craie, the Garraf Massif with the rocallís and Jerez with thealbarizaThe Rocallís of Garraf, beneath the sand, makes these wines that are unique in the world. The famous Can Ràfols dels Caus wine, essential and extraordinary, takes its name from the Rocallís.

In this Xarel·lo, then, there is this soil. in a good Chablis or a good sherry. And since I seek the purity of the variety, therefore, I cannot make a fustote". It means it's not about making a wine that feels like you're licking a plank. "What did I do? I used a 300-liter, third-use, un-fuste barrel." It's not a natural wine, it's a minimally invasive wine. What does that mean? If a vintage requires adding sulfites, they do. But they don't add fining agents or stabilizers. They make "artisanal" wines from this territory of ours, which they claim and exalt with all their intelligence and intuition. They are three wine lovers; they are intuition and intelligence.

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