Celler La Salada, El Pages Content Blanca 2023

45% Parellada, 50% Macabeu, 5% Xarello

Penedes, Catalonia, Spain

Biodynamic. Parcels: El Blanc (Xarel.lo)+ La Fusta (Montònec)+ Sota l'hort (Macabeu). Direct pressing (5% of Xarel.lo macerated on the skins for two weeks) and co-ferment for one month inside a cairons, a large, old-school Catalan underground fermenter lined with tile, used by previous generations of La Salada family and recovered in 2018. Kept in the cairons for four months after ferment. Unfined, unfiltered. VEGAN, NO ADDED SULFUR. 

The Pagès Content wines are meant to honor the Catalan farming families of the past who worked the land as a vocation with enthusiasm and love. They’re the inspiration for these easygoing wines, based on whichever fruit the year grants. 

Toni Carbó built Mas Candí with his best friend and business partner Ramón Jané before starting Celler La Salada in 2012. His family’s estate soils ring with life; they’ve been farmed sustainably for generations, untouched by chemicals. Their vineyards are not tilled; this is true minimal intervention agriculture. The objective is to have the highest variety life in the soil and create a natural balance within the environment. Toni’s old vines express Vi Català as it was when his grandfather made it: fresh, characterful, and lively. No additions, including sulfur, whatsoever in any of his wines. Today, La Salada is Toni and his sister Montse, fourth generation winemakers quietly leading the most experimental of all the Mas Candi splinter-state wineries, which is, frankly, no easy feat. Their vineyards, 23 ha in total, inherited from their grandfather, range from old and beautiful to one-foot-in-the-grave-but-producing-heartbreakingly-gorgeous-fruit and very beautiful.