2005 Turó d’en Mota, the summit of sparkling wines

“The next vintage sold of what I consider the summit of Penedès’ sparkling wines will be the 2005 Turó d’en Mota, one variety, one place, one vintage Xarel·lo planted in 1940 on calcium carbonate-rich soils (14% active limestone) and harvested in 2005; this is a powerful year with concentration, perfect ripeness and good acidity.

All this is possible achieving yields of 31 hectoliters per hectare in a year that was warmer and drier than the average. Yet the finished wine, disgorged after 121 months in bottle (each bottle has the disgorgement date on the back label and I tasted the first disgorgement for this vintage) has a very low pH of 2.96 and high acidity, 7.4 grams of tartaric acid and only one gram of residual sugar, as no sugar is added to any wine here—all the sparkling wines that Recaredo makes are Brut Nature.

Those numbers are remarkable for a dry year with a warm summer, which often resulted in ripe wines. Not here, the wine is compact and powerful, but the style of Turo d’en Mota is always austere and a little closed, serious. It is a wine that is very mineral, more about the soil than the yeast aging. The palate is superb, pungent and mineral; this is a wine that despite the long ageing is still very much alive and, dare I say it, still young and… in need of more bottle ageing?

The 0.97 hectares yielded 3,984 bottles in 2005. They have kept 2004 to be released later on, because they consider that is a vintage that will benefit from even more time, in line with what happened with 2001. I’m already looking forward to it…”.

The Wine Advocate Magazine
Luis Gutiérrez
October 2016