Mas del Serral 2013

Cool and damp. Excellent vintage, with long and healthy ripening cycles, like they used to be more than 30 years ago.

A demanding vintage with great potential for ageing. A cycle which reminded us of those of 30 years ago, when we harvested the Macabeo after the Sant Sadurní Fairs and the Xarel.lo at the end of September. Wet autumn, cool and dry winter with sporadic rainfall. Spring started out cool and damp, with rains in March and May. The end of spring was cool and dry, followed by a meteorologically short summer, that produced a slow vegetative development. The harvest started on 19 August. There were no heat waves during the months of August and September – the summer temperatures were moderate which contributed to a slow and good maturity of the different varieties of grape.

During the agricultural year we had a high precipitation rate of 605 L/m2 (average rainfall of the past 20 years is 548 L/m2) and an average temperature of 14.7 °C, without extreme temperatures (average temperature of the last twenty years is 15.1 ºC).

Extraordinary vintage with structured wines with extreme acidity and excellent ripening. Perhaps the best vintage of the last 30 years on the Raventós i Blanc estate.

The soils on the Estate are calcareous. The first layer comprises roots of up to 1 meter that live in the clay along with nutrients, organic matter and water. Second layer, from 1 meter down. This is where the plant meets the compact clays known locally as galera. Calcareous base rock encrusted with marine fossils.

The varieties we have planted are Xarel·lo and Bastard Negre, an ancestral variety that Pepe is trying to recuperate.

In winemaking, we go to the limit and from 2014 - in the garage of the Mas del Serral- we make natural parcel vinification of: “La Vinya del Mas”, “La Vinya del Noguer” and “ Les Terrasses del Serral”.

Mas del Serral is a sparkling wine that comes from the Xarel·lo and Bastard Negre vines that have been co-planted since 1954, in the Clos del Serral plot, within the Raventós i Blanc estate. A plot that in 2005 Pepe Raventós, the 21st generation of winegrowers working on this estate, recognised as exceptional and decided to work and care for it like a garden.

Clos del Serral is, without a doubt, the most emblematic plot of the family estate.  It has a unique microclimate due to its north/northwest orientation; a slight slope and thanks to the fact that it is protected by the Serral forest. Its soils are also calcareous with a large amount of marine fossils that provide a unique mineral character in the mouth.

We worked with biodynamic viticulture and carved only with the help of our Breton horses, without any type of machinery - zero CO 2 emissions in this plot, 0 soil compaction … - and with vines over 80 years old: Clos del Serra became the origin of this wine. In 2007 Pepe Raventós decided that this would be the ideal habitat for the production of an exceptional sparkling wine: Mas del Serral.

In Pepe’s words : “This is the wine I always dreamed of making, since harvest 2004 with Didier Dagueneau at Sant-Andelain; the most mineral sparkling wine”

Mas del Serral 2013

This is a sparkling wine that begins with a harvest in boxes and a subsequent second selection, grain by grain, in the Mas garage, and ends with a quiet 100-month rest on the lees.