Brutal!!! 2024 - Celler Escoda-Sanahuja

I was first introduced to Joan Ramon Escoda at his impressive cellar and adjoining restaurant Tossal Gros by Jordi Llorens. After spending the day with Jordi at his cellar in nearby Blancafort, I tagged along while he dropped wine to his old friend for a groupage shipment. What followed was a baptism of fire in Catalan wine that lasted late into the evening, and a candid introduction to the characters that sowed the seeds of the region's current rude health.
Joan Ramon grew up in Reus, a petrochemical capital, where he excelled at motocross, winning a regional championship. At the behest of his wife Carmen, he shifted his focus to wine, and began his schooling at Carmen's family estate. After a stint working at a large commercial winery in Catalunya, he travelled across France, striking up an enduring friendship with Thierry Puzelat while in the Loire, which would deeply influence his philosophy going forward.
In 1997, Joan Ramon and Carmen took the reins at her family estate in Prenafeta, a tiny hamlet close to Montblanc. They set about converting to organics, before establishing the estate under the name Escoda-Sanahuja, as it's known today, in 1999. From this time the influence of biodynamics became more present in their work, in both the vineyard and the cellar, and the estate grew into a thriving system of polyculture, with olive groves and fruit trees merging between the vineyards. By 2005 the pair had ceased adding sulphur to the wines entirely, fining and filtration being things they had never practised. At the time this was unheard of in Catalunya, though they were convinced by the results.
Their estate sits on the clay and limestone slopes below Tossal Gros, a regional landmark whose pointed peak, just under 870 metres, is known locally as the Nas del Gegant, the giant's nose. A few kilometres away, the Cistercian monastery of Poblet, founded in 1151 and inhabited by monks to this day, cultivated vines through the Middle Ages, as the Romans had done before them.
In 2012 the cellar was built three storeys down into the mountain it sits on, reached by steep stairs or a rickety cage lift. Here Joan Ramon uses a mix of vessels, barrels, amphora of various sizes and steel, with the vintage determining how each is used. One thing is for certain: all the wines, whites and reds alike, are macerated on their skins, the length varying by cuvée, with Joan Ramon prizing fluidity above all.
Surrounding the cellar, the vines remain splendidly isolated, ringed by forest and woods with no immediate neighbours. Flowers and grasses grow freely between the rows, and the vines are treated with herbal preparations through the growing season. Left to dig deep into the limestone for the water they need, they draw up the intense, almost cavernous minerality that illuminates each of his cuvées, year after year.

Sumoll's return to the frontier of Catalan wine is a remarkable story. It had been prized up until the 1950s for it's low PH and high potential alcohol, which made it suitable for long sea voyages, servicing export markets Catalunya had established over centuries of trade. A confluence of factors relating to the globalisation of the wine trade in the late 20th century reversed the fortunes of the resilient variety, to the point that by the turn of the millenium there were scarcely 300 acres planted in the region. Somehow, the variety had been excluded from the Penedes DO when it was formed in 1986, further diminishing it's commercial value, before its resurgence in the hands of inspired growers in the region constituted it's inclusion from 2010 onwards. The variety had always been a mercurial charge for those who chose to grow it. It's low yields and big, fleshy berries give an intense juice that demands care and experience in both the vineyard and cellar if it is to reach it's full potential.

Grapes: Sumoll

Region: Prenafeta, Conca de Barberà, Catalunya, Spain

ABV: 12.5%