Turó d’en Mota 2008: an iconic vintage awarded around the world
The 2008 vintage of Turó d’en Mota is the end result of a year marked by contrasts. After a moderately dry, warm autumn and winter, a rainy spring set the pace in the vineyard. The painstaking work done by the Recaredo team over the whole year yielded healthy clusters with great expressiveness and extraordinary acidity, ideal for careful ageing in the bottle for a minimum of twelve years and a half, resulting in a yield of 4,317 bottles. The result is a harmonious and delicate wine that reveals the most authentic essence of the Mediterranean, with low yields (21.3 hl/ha) of very high-quality fruit – a vibrant vintage with a unique character that blends with the purest and subtlest nuances produced by the passage of time. Turó d’en Mota 2008 has been fermented in 300-litre oak barrels.
Both the national and international critics have confirmed that this is an exceptional vintage, vibrant and with a unique personality. Robert Parker Wine Advocate or La Guia de Vins de Catalunya 2023 have rated Turó d’en Mota 2008 as the top sparkling wines, the Verema Awards 2022 as the Sparkling Wine of the Year or La Guía de Vinos 2023 of La Vanguardia as one of the essential wines for 2023.
Robert Parker Wine Advocate rates Turó d’en Mota 2008 as the top sparkling wine
With a score of 97 points, the highest ever awarded to a sparkling wine, Robert Parker Wine Advocate ranked Turó d’en Mota 2008 among the top sparkling wines in Spain. According to taster Luis Gutiérrez, “It’s a magnificent white wine with bubbles – completely different, with loads of personality and character. It’s a superior Recaredo wine and an exceptional vintage in the area.” He adds that “the aromatic palette of this wine is very different from the rest of the line-up, with green olives, curry, toasted and smoked spices, all integrated in a very subtle way”
Turó d’en Mota 2008, selected as best Catalan wine by La Guia de Vins de Catalunya
This Corpinnat has also received the triple recognition of La Guia de Vins de Catalunya 2023 as the best Catalan wine, the best sparkling wine and the best Xarel·lo wine among over 1,100 wines and 206 wineries, awarding the vintage a score of 9.86. The experts behind the guide describe this wine as “extraordinary” and “elegant” for its overall balance and harmony, and “mineral” because it evokes the calcareous soil, adding an extra dimension of connection to the land.
Sparkling Wine of the Year at the Verema Awards 2022
Turó d’en Mota 2008 has been choose as the Sparkling Wine of the Year at the Verema Awards 2022. The accolade is given based on the votes of both sector professionals and all the wine and gastronomy enthusiasts who make up the verema.com. The Vendimia tasters describe Turó d’en Mota 2008 as having “a good attack, which is delicious, with magnificent acidity, great structure, fully integrated effervescence, creamy, ample and very long”.
Essential Sparkling Wine for 2023 in La Guía de Vinos 2023 La Vanguardia
Finally, La Guía de Vinos 2023 La Vanguardia has recommended this Corpinnat as one of the essential Sparkling Wines of the year, assuring in the words of the taster Lluís Tolosa, that this wine “has had a truly exceptional year. It is a terroir sparkling wine, with a minimal intervention viticulture and a very long aging of more than 12 years that give it all its complexity and that, in turn, represents the elegance of simplicity’. He also adds that ‘Recaredo produces wines that remain impeccable for more than 20 years’.
First single-variety sparkling wine in history
Turó d’en Mota, a 0.97-hectare bush-trained vineyard planted in 1940, is an important part of the natural heritage of the Penedès region. The first vintage was 1999. Released in the spring of 2008, it was the first sparkling wine produced in the Penedès wine region using grapes of a single variety, Xarel·lo, from a single vineyard. The vintage was also an expression of Recaredo’s commitment to extremely long ageing.
The Turó d’en Mota vineyard is located in the far northwest of Sant Sadurní d’Anoia, in the heart of the Penedès region, on the northern slope of a hill known as Turó d’en Mota, from which it takes its name. The soil of the Turó d’en Mota vineyard is notable for the presence of carbonate nodules, formed through the concentration of lime in the soil, that give each vintage of this Corpinnat great character.
According to Ton Mata, Turó d’en Mota represents the dream of bottling a vineyard and making a terroir wine in the broadest sense – an expression of land characterised by highly calcareous soil, a Mediterranean microclimate, and an approach to viticulture that stresses observation over intervention.
