As I mentioned in the article about the vintage of 2014, it was not an easy year and a rough go for the winemakers. In general, there seemed to be two camps in dealing with it around Catalonia. There were those who tried to do a lot of cellar work to boost the wines, resulting in bottles that will take some time to open up. Then there were those who didn’t fight it, went with the lighter character and let the wine ride out the storm as it wanted.
Most went with the first solution and have these typically earthy wines. There were only rare cellars that took the second option as I recently saw with this bottle of the Cuvilà from Vines d’en Gabriel. This wine is 100% Grenache from the village of La Figuera. Known for being lighter and fresher fruit, it generally makes wines of a different profile. But winemaker Josep Maria seems to have gone for the less is more approach with less maceration and extraction.
The result is a surprisingly fresh wine from a field of wines where such a profile isn’t often found and for this vintage, it stands out wonderfully which will be good news to those who enjoy the wine as the 2013 has been sold out for some time.
