MENDALL
All in Blanc 2021
Catalonia, Spain
A blend of Macabeo with a touch of Garnacha Blanca planted in various parcels of vines young and old. This wine arrives from the final press of various cuvées, which have been fermented on the skins for between two days and a week. Nine months of rest in vats has rendered a beautiful, hazy and textural amber wine that combines orange zest, minerals and Mediterranean herbs to beautiful effect.
Macabeo, Garnacha Blanca
ABOUT THE PRODUCER
The Mendall cellar is based in El Pinell de Brai, a hot, dusty little town which looks like something out of a Spaghetti Western and serves as the unlikely ground zero of Catalunya’s lively wine scene.
A pioneer who has been influential in inspiring others in the area to return to their winemaking roots, Laureano Serres Montagut was also there the night the Brutal Wine Corporation was founded and is an organiser of one of Europe’s most talked-about wine fairs, H2O Vegetal. A legendary figure in Catalan wine, Laure has a spirit, sense of community and love of life that are as legendary as they are infectious.
Laureano was working as a computer programmer in Madrid when he decided a change of scenery was necessary and returned to his hometown to head the local winemaking cooperative. A couple of years later he set off on his own, bottling wine under the Mendall label from the 1999 harvest. He has worked organically from the very beginning, and since 2002, after forgetting to add any sulphur to the wines and enjoying the results, he has never looked back.
Having completed her winemaking studies, Laureano’s daughter Alícia now works side-by-side with her father, offering her own energy and vigour to the next chapter of Mendall. Today they farm five-and-a-half hectares of vineyards planted over limestone high in the Terra Alta, with the soils and elevation lending the wines a freshness and complexity not often found in this part of the world.
The wines are made in all manner of vessels in a tiny cellar in the town centre. Limited space dictates that the majority of wines are bottled young, brimming with an energy that comes from the family’s unique brand of winemaking, which combines creativity and restraint to offer original, vivid expressions of grape and place.