The 2019 harvest in Clos del Serral

Making wine is probably the best thing that could ever have happened to us. The best knowledge that our ancestors have passed on to us and the best memory we can leave to our successors. Winemaking is connecting to the land and following its rhythm, and the land is nothing more than our terroir. Making wine involves all of us. Winemaking is an intense month of harvest, but also everything that comes out of it. Winemaking is celebration, emotion, nature, rhythm, travelling and discovering. Winemaking is maintaining what began 21 generations ago. Winemaking is living. And we live intensely.

Winemaking is also the harvest and we want to tell you about this year’s harvest on the Raventós estate.

In general terms, the 2019 harvest was late, but exceptional, one of the healthiest we can remember on the estate, highly concentrated and with good balances – between 10.8% alcoholic volume and 5.1 g / l total acidity.

Compared to previous years the cycle was slightly later, due to the cold spell at the beginning of April when the plant was budding. Even so, production has been very good thanks to good rainfall in 2018 and the way we have worked the soil well with the help of our team and the horses.

With every harvest we bottle a year of life so we want to explain, from the beginning, how Mas del Serral 2019 was born.

The day we chose was Wednesday September 5, just one year after the last harvest, a fruit day according to the biodynamic calendar. As always, and in keeping with our good habits, the harvest in Clos del Serral is a team effort – one sole plot with strains of xarel·lo and negre bastard facing the north. The Clos grape was beautiful, the plant had energy and very good vegetative growth.

We harvested 3,650 kg of xarel·lo in small boxes, making a careful selection in the vineyard and in the winery, grape by grape with a lot of concentration and rigour.

Harvesting the Clos del Serral connects us with the soil, the plant and the people around us. The land gives us the fruits, we only have to know how to interpret them.

We press the whole grape with a yield of 50% in the press and we cool the must at 13ºC. Three days later, on 8 September, we inoculate the fermentation from the same vineyard and on September 11 the alcoholic fermentation began.

We said that wine making is living, but it is also knowing how to wait. So, to enjoy the 2019 vintage from Mas del Serral, we will have to wait until 2029 because it will rest on the lees for 100 months. Its second vintage will be on the market this October, only in magnum format and with a production of 849 bottles.

For more information about this sparkling wine: @MasdelSerral