Partida Creus 'VN' Vinel.lo Blanco 2023

Partida Creus VN Vinel•lo is a field blend of seven indigenous white grape varieties from Catalonia's Penedès region. The blend includes Xarel-lo, Garnacha Blanca, Macabeo, Moscatel, Vinyater, Parellada, and Parsé grown on clay-limestone soils in Massís de Bonastre. Hand-harvested grapes undergo 1-3 days skin maceration before indigenous yeast fermentation in stainless steel tanks. The wine ages for two months in steel with no filtration, fining, or sulfur additions, following strict natural winemaking principles.

Massimo Marchiori and Antonella Gerosa are the Italian couple behind Partida Creus. They settled in the Massís de Bonastre in the Baix Penedés around the year 2000. There they started farming all kinds of local foodstuffs but had trouble finding wines made in the same style so they started making their own, recovering old vines of local grape varietals. In most cases, the vineyards were close to abandoned. Whenever they find a new vineyard, they’ll go to the nearby town, find out who the owner is and approach them to buy or at least farm the vineyard, organically of course. People think they’re crazy for doing this as they are very old, low yielding vineyards and in most cases, obsolete grape varietals. Some have been disqualified from D.O. for lack of color, as was the case with Sumoll, others were never even accepted. Now they’re known as the crazy Italians making incredible natural wines with the grapes that all of the locals had written off in exchange for the more “international” varietals.