Can Sumoi, Xarel·lo - 2020

Fast Facts:

Winemaker(s): Pepe Raventós & Francesc Escala
Region: El Montmell → Baix Penedès → Catalonia → Spain
Classification: DO Penedès
Varietal(s): Xarel·lo
Terroir: Shallow, stony limestone and red clay; mountain-cooled Mediterranean climate, 2K kilometers elevation.
Serving Temp: 48-54°F

Pepe Raventós likes to say Can Sumoi found him. He was out on his bike in the hills above the Catalan coast when he rode past a farm dating back to 1645 that nobody had worked in twenty years: stone farmhouses, an old cellar, and a thousand acres of oak and pine creeping over the terraces. Pepe is the 21st generation of the Raventós family, truly the sparkling wine people of the Penedès, and he'd been wanting somewhere to make still wine. What a rebel! He went back with his childhood friend Francesc Escala, and the two of them took it on.

The farm sits nearly 2,000 feet up, close enough to the Mediterranean that Pepe says you can pick out Mallorca on a clear winter morning. It runs several degrees cooler up there than at the family's home estate, which is how a white from the Spanish coast ends up this taut. And the dirt is a total fluke: a fault line left one small pocket of red seabed clay sitting on limestone, fossil shells and all, while everything around it wore down to bare rock. Lucky guys.

The place is named for a red grape (Can Sumoi is old Catalan for "the house of Sumoll"), but the wine they've staked it on is white. Xarel·lo ("sha-REL-lo") is the grape that gives Catalan sparkling wine its classic backbone, and yet with this bottling it stays in still form. It comes off old bush vines, each one a freestanding shrub with no wires, some farmed by the estate and some farmed by growers nearby. The grapes are pressed gently and fermented cleanly in tank, then the wine rests on its lees (the spent yeast) for a few months, stirred now and then, filling out the mid-palate and adding texture.

Why'd we pick it?

Pepe calls Xarel·lo "the king," which is a big word for a grape most people have only had as bubbles, if they've even had it at all. He grew up surrounded by it, and he says what he wants now is to find its limits and how much story it can tell. Can Sumoi is where he gets to try exactly that, leaning on more still wines than bubbles and pulling different styles out of the same grape from the same hills, with no oak on this one. A few years in bottle have only helped his case.

Field Notes

• Tastes like: Baked apple, dried fennel, chamomile, and a little beeswax. Salty and firm, finishing on a bitter almond-skin vibe that Xarel·lo is known for.
• Serve it: Keep it in the fridge, but serve it after a good 20-minute stint on the counter. Swirl this bad boy.
• Food Pairings: Manila clams with leeks and a splash of the wine, and crusty bread, of course! Simmer up some chickpeas with saffron and garlic until they're creamy and slide a fried egg on top, throw on toast if you so wish. Or grab some fried chicken on the way home, with hot honey over the top if you're feeling it.