{"product_id":"el-soci-2024-bodega-clandestina","title":"El Soci 2024 - Bodega Clandestina","description":"\u003cp\u003eThese old vines show a remarkably fresh expression of Macabeu, with radiant citrus and a spring water freshness. Great drinking flow on the palate, with racy acidity and a satifying bite of salinity.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eDirect press of the bunches, with fermentation in steel. The wine was racked after malolactic fermentation, and aged in steel until bottling the following April.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003ch3\u003eThe producer\u003c\/h3\u003e\u003cp\u003eFerran Lacruz works 8 hectares of vines around his hometown of Sant Martí Sarroca in the Alt Penedès. A graduate of the Escola Agrària de Viticultura i Enologia Mercè Rossell i Domènech, Ferran was moved to make wine in his hometown after years working in tourism, where he encountered first-hand, among his clients, the reputational damage that decades of heavy, intensive viticulture had inflicted on the region. Growing up in the Penedès with a winemaking uncle, Ferran knows the hills of the Alt Penedès like the back of his hand, so when it came to acquiring vines, he already knew where to look. He was exacting in his selection, picking sites not on the hillsides where one might expect, but in the valleys, where the diurnal range is greatest, allowing slower ripening and later harvests. His Xarel·lo comes from old vine stock planted in the '60s and '70s, trained in gobelet, growing to a remarkable size in the famous cervell de gat soils of the region. He has also planted Carignan Blanc, a variety that ripens late and keeps its acidity well. In the cellar, all of the wines see a certain amount of skin contact, extracting the phenolics inherent to Xarel·lo and lending his wines a delicate complexity that shows the class of the variety. Ferran's use of glass for the élevage of the lighter wines brings a roundness and balance, while old wood and amphorae are used in the ageing of the more extracted wines. The wines themselves are remarkably lucid, detailed with the typicity of their provenance and the fiery personality of their maker.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003ch3\u003eThe place\u003c\/h3\u003e\u003cp\u003eFerran likes to say this wine is a good honest table wine. For me, it delivers so much more, highlighting the quality of the raw materials that the Penedès has to offer by keeping the vinification relatively simple. Macabeu is always a grape from which I expect broad shoulders and breadth of fruit, but this is something else entirely, built on a balance of purity and acidity. The vines are up to 80 years old, so we have a great mineral density in the wine, though it is not weighed down. Ferran looks for vineyards that are planted in small \"valleys\" on the hillsides of alt-Penedès, where the cold air settles at night and evens ripening. The altitude is also a factor here, and while we are not at dizzying heights, the vineyards grow between 190masl an 390masl, where the climate and diurnal range become a factor. The 4 parcels were harvested over four passes. Ferran seeks stability here, so the first pass is on the cusp of ripeness, keeping the ph down. This is then blended with the other three passes, capturing the evolution of the fruit at harvest time in one wine.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eGrapes:\u003c\/strong\u003e Macabeu\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eRegion:\u003c\/strong\u003e Sant Martí Sarroca, Alt-Penedès, Catalunya, Spain\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eABV:\u003c\/strong\u003e 11%\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Bodega Clandestina","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":54988702941522,"sku":"25\/001090","price":26.5,"currency_code":"EUR","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/1116\/0246\/7154\/files\/bw-el-soci-2024.jpg?v=1793699099","url":"https:\/\/www.brianswines.ie\/products\/el-soci-2024-bodega-clandestina","provider":"Brian's Wines","version":"1.0","type":"link"}