Sunday lunch with ancestral dishes from top to bottom

"You and I know each other because we're on the same viticulture chat," he tells me. And then a light goes on in my head. He, Marc Dominici, works at an audiovisual company, in post-production, and we're in a group where we share experiences about wine bars, discoveries, wine purchases, and visits to wineries. I tell him I didn't know he made wine and ask him what it's like. "Out of unconsciousness. I have a habit, which is that when I really like something, I go from theory to practice. Cinema, for example. And wine. I started as a waiter in my town, in Vallgorguina, and every week I would take a bottle and taste it. With two friends, we started to recover a vineyard. We did. In the vineyard there was everything, like before. Xarel lo, Garrón, pink raisin... Because way back in time, the coupage of the year's wine was made in the vineyard. "With all that, we made two wines. One white and one red, but that project had an expiration date, and we abandoned it because in the end I was left alone."

Looking for projects in the area, he found a landowner who had eight hectares of Sauvignon Blanc and Chardonnay. Many vineyards planted with a huge investment, which had been abandoned. The owner told him: "I bought a farm with vineyards and I like beer. Do something." He recovered 0.8 hectares, the only thing he could. "You couldn't go in because they were brambles. They told me: «You're wasting your time…»"

Now, in the Montseny area, our Italian-Catalan friend makes a still wine, from Chardonnay, called Baluard. "I've reached agreements with other owners. We'll have another hectare. We'll have a coastal vineyard of Garnacha Peluda, if it works out."

The wine of the ancestors

And like many winemakers starting out, he ended up in La Xarmada, in Pacs del Penedès. A place to make wine (and receive advice, which is always necessary). "When we found La Xarmada, heaven opened up for me. My partner is from Tarrés, in Les Garrigues. And the family had a Parellada vineyard, and they sold the grapes to the cooperative. And since we had La Xarmada, we started making Tarrés wines ourselves." The ancestral wine we have in your glass today is from there, from Les Garrigues. An ancestral wine, we always explain, is a sparkling wine that undergoes a single fermentation (not two, like cava or champagne). It's what our ancestors did: taking wine from the fermenting cask and allowing it to finish fermentation in the bottle.

"It's especially difficult to sell wine. We need a distribution channel, someone to help us. Now, of course, many cooperatives in Les Garrigues are making oil. Tarrés had a lot of vineyards and only two remain. We can't lose."

It's an ancestral wine from a small vignette, a 30-year-old Macabeo. Because his father-in-law told him: "Either you make me a wine or I'll pull up the vineyard." This Macabeo won't remind him of a Macabeo from the Penedès. It goes up a bit more in alcohol (they harvest for the Mercè) but it also retains the acidity due to the climate of Les Garrigues, which is very extreme. Very hot during the day, very cool at night.

"And since we saw we had something interesting, and I like to be contrary, I thought: many ancestral wines are vintage, but what would happen if ours was aged for a long time? And we had it for thirty months. And we were very pleasantly surprised."

This ancestral wine, for me, can last an entire meal from top to bottom, maybe. A first course, a second course, and who knows, maybe dessert. The name Bricairàs is a tribute to the Italian family. They, as is still done in some houses here, have the custom of eating on Sundays with sparkling wine. Bricairàs is the Catalanized name of Bricherasio, the family village.

And if we're talking about words, they have another wine, Sarandeca, which is the word they use in the west to talk about debauchery. It's the sparkling wine of vermouth. Of potatoes and olive trees. This ancestral dish of today is a gateway for young people, a surprising ancestral dish, very gastronomic, very fun and cheerful, for playing with fricandó food, but also rice, but also rabbit stew with herbs, or, of course, the classic roast chicken with sparkling wine, which celebrates Sunday and the holiday. You'll tell me, also using an old expression, that it's necessary for me to be here now.

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