"We made our daughter, Mia, after tasting 30 or 40 Henri Bourgeois wines, in a moment of happiness."

Jordi Montserrat didn't know whether to study physiotherapy or oenology (eggs and chestnuts). And so one day he went to lunch with Joan Milà, the essential winemaker. A master of the Espiells school, where it all begins, he left his wine-stained hands in the earth, was passionate about teaching, and revived varietals when no one else was doing so. A winery advisor, he was passionate and generous (I don't want to forget to mention that the Vinseum, the wine museum of Catalonia, paid him a tribute). After that lunch, Jordi would study oenology. "'Kid, do you like to cook?' he asked me. 'Come into the kitchen!'" And we made cuttlefish with peas. What wine do you want to open? And I opened a French wine. At home, we made cava for our own consumption, mistela, gin... I'd had parties where all my friends drank the gin I made. And I'm finishing oenology. Delicious. I'm studying, out of both a bad head and pleasure, level 3 of the Wine Set. What wines are made in Fleurie could be an exam question. "The winery was Jacques Colin's on the Côte de la Madone. A Swiss man would come, make the blend, buy 100% of the grapes, and bottle them in Switzerland."

Then, Joan Milà "connected" him at the Vall de Baldomar winery, owned by the Porta family, in Costers del Segre. Later, he went to Torres, where he spent seventeen years, and ended up studying "in the absence of a marketing god, Philip Kotler." He traveled the world, visiting all the wine-growing regions. South Africa, New Zealand, the Loire, Italy, Champagne... Upon his return, he worked at Faustino and Roqueta. "I helped launch a gem like Lafou on the market."

His personal project, Àrid Vins, in the Penedès, was set up with his brother and one of Joan Milà's sons. They started with a wine from Priorat, Árido: "Even the rubbish, and in Finland we sell 8,000." And Today's wine, a Sauvignon Blanc, this highly aromatic variety, which everyone loves and which is hard to grow in our climate, is made because he's crazy about the wines of Domaine Delaporte, in the Loire, in the Sancerre DO, in the village of Chavignol. He goes to see the winery, to see the climatic differences, to learn how to make it. "And one day I was having dinner with him, with Delaporte, we're going to dinner, and he says to me: 'Wait.' He calls. And we're going to see Henri Bourgeois." Our man, today, tells us about two of the most important, brilliant, and admired winemakers in the Loire. "Burgeois tells me: 'We'll start with the 1952 vintage and go up.' We made 30 or 40 wines; it was the happiest night of my life, with my wife, Luz... And that night we gave birth to our daughter, Mia. We made it there, in a moment of happiness."

I will always admire and envy down to the roots of my hair people who show themselves happy and explain something as precious as this. I admire couples who laugh. When the magazines talk about a "gesture of complicity" I open my eyes and I am surprised.

And here we have in the glass a Sauvignon Blanc, from high-altitude vineyards, from the Montagut peak, the Eólico 2023. They seek freshness, and that's why they do two different types of maturation. Let there be no lack of water, in the grape, which would have "tastes of cucumbers." What is in this Sauvignon Blanc is our tomato plant, the smell of a tomato. And the tropical fruit, yes. They do it all in stainless steel and with store-bought yeast. It rests, yes, on lees, which will always give us good cream. This 2023 remains about four or five months, maybe. And here we have it: temperature-controlled fermentation and lees aging.

"And to top it all off, I'll tell you something that will surprise you. Since I work from home, I looked into all the Swedish monopolies, which were ordering cans of sparkling. I made a sparkling, of xarel·lo and macabeo, with lees, and we win the tend. We're Monopoly's best-selling can, they gave us the award for the best can. The can is paying my bills."

Enjoy the freshness, the total aroma, the crazy complication of making a sauvignon blanc here, tropical and intense, with the native tomato plant rubbing our noses. roll, of funky, happy.

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