A wine that's a game in a garage of Santa Margarita and the Monks

This is a friend's wine. But it's a friend's wine because I like to befriend people who are happy doing the things they're talented at. With Àngel Vendrell, the inventor of Ouiea Vins, you'd all want to go to dinner.

Now, he's a gardener. He understands plants. He talks to trees and holds onto them. He understands how branches should be pruned. He's a curious man, very curious, in both senses of the word. He's curious, and he's amazing. He makes "garage" wine, literally. In his parents' garage. We met because one day he invited me to watch and taste, which is one of my favorite activities: visiting wineries and talking to the winemakers, tasting things. Àngel likes tasting more than drinking. And he can go years and locks without tasting a cask he has full of something, just for the fun of it.

Today's wine, Oh Yeah, will make you sayOh yeah!"Or maybe 'Ouiea!' It's a game. A still Xarel·lo wine with a touch of boiled wine. Boiled wine! It's wine made by boiling the must until it reduces by half. Once reduced (this year I made boiled wine with a friend's must) it can be poured into a cask. Wineries like Abadal sell it. It should be on every table in Catalan restaurants.

This wine today—a blend touched by the wing, like our winemaker—is aged for eight days, then it's allowed to steep for three weeks. The boiled wine is added two weeks before bottling. Aromatically, I wanted it to be more powerful," says Ángel.

"You'll end up making wine."

Ángel, who has a partner, Marcel Escribano, was once told, "You'll end up making wine." But that didn't happen until his father began to lose his memory. "When my father started fading," he says, and the verb moves me deeply, "I thought that what I had in a corner of the garage wouldn't continue. He made a small jug of mulled wine, a small jug of mistela... I told him, 'Come on, let's do it this year, I'll help you.'" And Ángel kept an eye on things and asked questions. "As a result, I put some of the must that wasn't suitable for either mistela or mulled wine in a cask to see how it fermented. It was my first attempt at winemaking, in 2019, and I didn't taste it until 2023. I've learned to wait."

In 2024 he made eight ancestral wines, this year four. "I'm quite happy with how they're turning out. We're doing a lot of things, some just for me." Or for friends who come over."

This wine will remind you of "the wine that used to be made at home." A wine that takes you back to the seeds. Enjoy it with an anchovy and cheese sandwich, with roast chicken... Ángel is very good at making mulled wine, and many sommeliers and enthusiasts—but also other winemakers—call him for advice. "The people at Can Descregut told me they made a demijohn for themselves, and that's because we talked. They took a picture and labeled me. I just share what I've learned," he says. Ángel is curious, observant, restless. "I want to share everything because I'm not going to take it all with me. I haven't invented anything, I just offer different interpretations. What I want is for young people to be daring. Try things, try, try..."

Try this wine, which explains what Ángel is like, and I'm sure you'll want it, like I did. You'll find it in Santa Margarita and Los Monjes.