Luis Gutiérrez, the brilliant and – therefore – happy and modest Parker taster – this guide, the most important in the world –, went to taste at the winery of our friends Irene Alemany and Laurent Corrió. I was able to interview him at the Vertical tasting, from Catalunya Ràdio, the program we host, "farmer service," about the 100 points (the highest distinction) awarded, for the first time, to a Catalan sparkling wine: Recaredo. All the other sparkling wines awarded 100 points are top French champagne brands. I found him to be such a lazy person, so little of a protagonist, that it moved me. And anyone interested in seeing what this Parker points thing is like can watch the documentary about winemaker Raúl Pérez, The wine wizard, a beautiful and surprising, honest documentary film, directed by David Moncasi.
Our friends then told us: "We have the Sot Lefriec, twenty-year-olds, opened, from yesterday's tasting. Do you want to come share them?" And we went to the small garage where they make this legendary wine, because they no longer have bottles of some vintages. We tasted the latest Sot Lefriec 99, in the cold of the cellar, joyful and transcendent. We tasted evidence, old, white, Principia Mathematica, and we begged them to bottle them! In these twenty years, many things have happened. Once, Irene, pregnant with her daughter Sara, moved some wineskins. The next day she went into labor. This vintage, for me, speaks volumes of blood, life, and total love. Tasting those open wines, from our friends, was tasting the history of this land, sometimes so ungrateful, sometimes so magical. Twenty years of wines that are already a history of what we are and what we have been, that have transformed like us, that have become beautiful and perfect, that deserve a tribute to honesty, truth, fury, calm. "We have the bottles open, do you want to come?" they said simply. And I still remember the wine.
