The Ordal Mountains
in essence
El Corral Cremat
El Corral Cremat
2012
El Corral Cremat is the legacy of more than 40 years producing organic wines in the Ordal Mountains. A personal project of Josep Maria Albet Noya with the best vineyards of the estate and respecting the essence of the place where we live and the fruit it gives us.
It is a long-aged sparkling wine made from 100% Xarel·lo grapes. Following the parameters of the Clàssic Penedès label, this wine has been harvested and vinified at the Albet i Noya estate, where it has spent more than 10 years of constant evolution in the bottle awaiting the ideal moment to be enjoyed.
__ Tasting note __
Intense aromas of yeast, pastries, wild flowers and aromatic plants. In the mouth it is voluminous, with fine bubbles and an aftertaste of fresh grass, with just the right pleasant bitterness of the Xarel·lo variety, a great Mediterranean character that can only be achieved with the best Xarel·los from the Penedès.
The Catalonian sparkling-wine scene is in full ferment at present, with a huge range of ground-breaking wines finding their way to market -- though a glance at the vintage date on this wine shows that this is a revolution that has been in the making for over a decade now. The wine is pale-gold and fine-beaded. That heady scent of dry grasses, cream, herbs and wild flowers could only come from Xarel-lo, and only from Catalonia, too, with all its Mediterranean distinctiveness. The wine is mouth-filling, dry and structured, as perfumed on the tongue as it is in the glass, and ideally suited not only as a head-turning aperitif but for mealtime use, too.
France
Germany
Catalunya
The landscape
The Corral Cremat vineyard is part of a group of plots surrounded by forests, in a small valley in the middle of the Ordal Mountains, almost 400 metres above sea level. It is a natural amphitheatre facing south, which receives very few hours of sunshine and gives us a very slow ripening of the grapes with high acidity, ideal for long-aged sparkling wines.
The soil is very chalky and of balanced composition; shallow and with the parent rock always present. A soil structure typical of the Ordal Mountains that knows how to store rainwater for when the vines are thirsty.
The name Corral Cremat (The Burnt Barn) comes from a fire that took place in 1948 in the farmyard of the old Maset de Dalt farmhouse, located at the top of the valley and uninhabited since 1930, which over time became a defining element of this landscape.
The vintage
The 2012 vintage began with a very dry winter, typical of the Mediterranean climate, but in spring the rains arrived and made their presence felt for the rest of the year, which helped to endure a torrid month of July. In August, the rains continued and this led to a slow ripening of the grapes, resulting in a vintage of great concentration, especially in terms of acidity. An ideal vintage for long ageing such as this Clàssic Penedès.
