Cava renews its identity with wines like this one, where the territory becomes the central value. Freshness and complexity in a recent brand with a phenomenal future. Awarded Best Cava in the latest edition of the prestigious British International Wine Challenge, Villa Conchi Extra Brut Imperial 2018 receives, year after year, the unanimous congratulations of the national and international press with high scores from the Peñín Guide and James Suckling. A perfect option to toast with friends.
It is extraordinary to see the formidable nature of the aging associated with the rigorous and traditional “méthode champenoise” in wines such as Villa Conchi Extra Brut Imperial 2018, which so well illustrate the renewal of styles and categories of an appellation such as Cava, which seemed to lose steam in reason to the Castilian proverb “who covers a lot, squeezes little” (for territorial purposes) until properties such as this one managed to make the original and historic vineyard of central Catalonia their strongest expression of character. Cavas like Villa Conchi, which combines the typical varietal triad of the region (Macabeo, Xarel.lo and Parellada) with a Chardonnay that adds elegance and fruity quality, involve demanding technical work: night harvest to preserve the aromatic values, production by separated from each one of the varieties, a very long second fermentation and aging of almost two years in the bottle, and the achievement of the category of “Extra Brut” (together with that of “Brut Nature”, the most qualitative and demanding of all of the denomination due to the way in which no expedition liquor is added, only wine, at the time of the disgorgement), and for this reason it is highly sought after by the most seasoned contemporary consumer.
With a brilliant yellow color of enormous strength and a still intense and very fine carbonic acid, the Villa Conchi Extra Brut Imperial 2018 shows a very rich nose in nuances of white fruit (pear, green apple) with hints of pineapple and candied citrus pulp, warm puff pastry, new almonds, spices (ginger, cumin, white pepper), dried flowers and herbs, fine lees and an extraordinary mineral aspect with notes of chalk and flint. On the palate, the fruit, creamy and very mixed with carbonic acid, reveals exceptional strength and freshness, with a very good texture (waxes, plum skin, apple and citrus), notes of lemon jam, toasted nuts, spices (mace, ginger ), refreshing citric acidity and a long and balanced finish in which, along with mineral, saline and floral notes, the genuine autolysis values (mushroom, puff pastry) that so well identify its long aging come together.
Villa Conchi is an emotional project that was born in this decade as a tribute from the Alava businessman Javier Ruíz de Galarreta to his mother Conchi, who died in the summer of 2010 without seeing her son’s project in Catalan lands come to an end. Javier, who founded ARAEX-Rioja Alavesa in 1993 from a small group of wineries in this notable sub-zone of the D.O. Qualified Rioja, it had already been entertaining for some years in the incorporation into its group, through the business subdivision “Spanish Fine Wines”, of national wineries that could expand the territorial dimension of the marketer beyond Rioja. When he had managed to identify the vineyard and winery likely to become the renewal of Cava, and also giving shape to “The Grand Wines”, a new business unit of an exceptional “premium” nature, his mother passed away, and it was the weight itself of the difficult event that marks the beginning of the wine adventure itself in the Catalan fiefdom, of which the Villa Conchi Extra Brut Imperial 2018 is its first and most notable elaboration.
Cava is one of the most complex national denominations. Your vineyard can proceed by regulation of any national territory as long as it is able to abide by the varietal and production values dictated by the Council. To begin with, this offers a wide margin of maneuver and a lesser possibility of territorial defense, an issue that is undoubtedly key in the most thriving and contemporary wine industry. The vineyard chosen by Javier Ruíz de Galarreta for the elaboration of his stellar cava is located in the heart of the Penedès vineyard, a region trapped in a kind of “crucial” confluence between the Mediterranean and inland Catalonia, as well as between Tarragona more mountain (the appellations of Montsant and Priorat) that overlooks neighboring Barcelona and the Montmell-Marmellar mountain range, another rocky eminence in whose surroundings the Mediterranean influence remains invariable, with the sea barely forty kilometers away. The Xarel.lo and the Chardonnay come mainly from vineyards closer to the Mediterranean, between the Alt Camp (around the municipality of Valls) and the Baix Penedès, while the Macabeo and the Parellada are collected in vineyards further inland and close to the territory of the D.O. Conca de Barberà, vines with an average age of more than 25 years and planted at altitudes that are sometimes close to 600 meters, on calcareous, light and fresh soils, to which the surrounding mountains, including Montserrat, protect from cold northerly winds.
Once the territory from which Javier Ruíz de Galarreta wanted to build a proverbial cava with a novel identity as well as traditional was defined, technical issues captured all his attention. It was clear that the territory was going to be made up of the original regions of the Catalan sparkling wines, the Alt and Baix Penedès, from whose vineyard it was born at the beginning of the last century, with the excellent intrusion of the traditional or “champenoise” method, the modern “cava”. The person chosen in this case was Joan Rabadà, an eminent technician and professor at the Rovira i Virgili University, associated with the Department of Chemical Engineering and currently responsible for the subject of Oenological Engineering. Under his baton, with the monumental raw material from a mostly traditional vineyard (the varietal percentage of the French Chardonnay is minimal) and his deep knowledge of the transformation of the grape into bottled wine (with the added intermediate of the second fermentation in the bottle, which adds an absolutely unique sensory dimension), Joan has been instrumental in the success of some sparkling wines called to identify the new times of the denomination.
