Succés Vinícola
This one has it all. It's a love story. It's a story of wide eyed youthful innocence and enthusiasm. A story of triumph. It's a story of delicious wine!
Fresh out of school both Albert and Mariona (as yet unbeknownst to each other) only wanted to make wine. In Spain there are many thousands of grape growers - growers that cultivate fruit and sell it to wine makers. Good growers can make a great living and they are typically an older generation. Their offspring are the new drivers in the wine world. Both from grape growing families, Albert and Mariona wanted to do more than simply grow pristine fruit, they wanted to become conventional wine makers (though the wines would prove to be anything but conventional). They met when they were studying wine making in Tarragona and fell in love immediately, then they quickly set about deciding how they would rock the wine world.
Given their experience in families of huge repute in growing circles, absolute care in grape growing was a given. They wanted to be as hands off as possible, minimal intervention, minimal use of pesticides and organic. As generational grape growers, the mantra great wines are made in the vineyard and not the winery was not actually a mantra - it was just true. The couple quickly established an enthusiastic line of funding to get their wine project started through a system of grants. This was vital, because their vision may have been hard to fund through traditional investors.
In the DOP of Conca de Barbera, like many Catalan wine making regions, monks have been vinifting, bartering and drinking wine for centuries, but with precious little commercial experience. Add to this the fact that the teetotal dictator Franco thought that wine was only for the sacrament, and ordered all the interesting ancestral vines be grubbed up (a murderous tyrant, an idiot and a fierce bore at parties). There did remain some old Trepat and Parellada vines and these were cultivated to make sparkling wine. Never still wine. Why not? said Albert and Mariona. Why indeed!
Succes (the Catalan expression for an event) was born and they quickly formulated incredible wines, with the most striking packaging imaginable, each cuvee named after a significant event in their life. Experienca is 100% Parellada, a white grape made with a bit of skin contact, giving it magnificent texture, a bit of weight but still with terrific freshness. El Prat repeats the trick but is made with Macabeo from an old vineyard at altitude, super fresh but with layers of wild floral aromas and wild herbs. Patxanga is a savoury and unusual Rose that just screams out for lunch in the sun. 
The reds are all made from the mystical Trepat grape, and they are all wildly different, showing a spectrum of personalities. La Trompa is light in colour, but not flavour. This wine is reminniscent of a Jura red, light, spicy, great freshness. La Cuca de Llum is simply allowing Trepat be Trepat, bigger and more juicy than the Trompa, with that trademark spicy charcter. El Mentider is Trepat with a bunch of oak thrown at it. They all said it wont work, Albert and Mariona said "why not exactly?".
