The summer is again not playing nice as just yesterday it was pouring rain and about 20C while I wrote this article. Still, if you’re in the Northern Hemisphere, it’s probably much more sunny where you are and so these two wines are highly recommendable if so.
Most people long ago learned what to do when life gives you lemons but there are probably few who know what to do when Mother Nature throws hail your way unless of course you’re a winemaker. Every year, random hailstones are a constant threat as they can knock off the buds in spring or damage the grapes at any point up until they’re harvested.
Such was the dilemma confronted by Sota els Àngels last year. This winery in Baix Empordà was founded in 2003 by Maria Jesús de Polanco and Guy Jones at their beautifully restored masia. Farming biodynamically and organically, in 2013 they decided to change directions a bit and started working with enolog Fredi Torres who has made a name for himself in Priorat. It just happened that this year marked a disastrous bout of weather in the form of heavy hail which destroyed upwards of 80% of their crop. What was left, wasn’t going to be easy to make a wine from and Fredi talked them in to making a red as well as a ‘blanc de negre’. These are both young wines that come with screw caps instead of corks. But, don’t think for a minute they’re cut-rate wines as they were vinified via natural fermentation (as opposed to controlling it via foreign yeasts) and mark the start of a new path, letting Mother Nature guide the production a great deal more and thus, “going with the flow”.
