Celler Escoda Sanahuja Els Bassots 2023

Joan Ramón is not a winemaker you forget. He's a grassroots innovator, a radical, a sentimental husband, a father, and an absolute anarchist. Total rock and roll, as his generation would say in Catalunya. If you've ever tasted his wines, you know they are never, ever banal.

After years making wine for a big Catalonian winery and traveling through France, he fell hard for biodynamics and natural wine. In 1999, he started his own project in his wife's hometown, Prenafeta, in Conca de Barberà. By 2005, he was making wines with no added sulfites. He hasn't looked back.

This wine comes from a 20-year-old vineyard planted with Chenin Blanc, because Joan Ramón is obsessed with Chenin from the Loire, and decided the Mediterranean needed some of that energy too. The vines are rooted in deep clay and limestone at 450 metres, just 30 kilometres from the sea. The grapes macerate on their skins for two weeks in stainless steel. Then they're pressed and racked into 800-litre clay amphoras made in Extremadura, where they finish fermenting and rest for another seven or eight months.

Textured and saline, with a sunny, Mediterranean generosity. Yellow apple, dried herbs, a little honey. It's rock and roll, but it's also poetry.