Montsant Blanc, 'Venus de Cartoixà'

Score

92

"The 2020 Venus de Cartoixa is made from 100% Xarel·lo sourced from Montsant. Yellow in hue, it reveals ripe citrus aromas intertwined with fennel and wild herbs. Dry, rich and refreshing, it offers a faintly compact mouthfeel that leads to an intense, geeky finish. This is a modernist white for the region."

Score

95+

"Next to the skin-contact whites (Dido), the 2020 Venus de Cartoix… feels very different. This remains a white from direct pressing of the bunches, fermented without skins. 2020 was a very unusual and challenging year. They lost most of the crop to mildew, so they got a very small crop of very concentrated grapes; the juice is very intense and concentrated but silky and balanced, as the plants had enough leaves and few grapes to ripen. It feels a little more like a Priorat this year. This year, it has 14.5% alcohol (like in 2011, but that year they harvested later); all the wines from 2020 have higher alcohol. They only had juice to ferment one 300-liter barrel and one glass demijohn that fermented very fast (a constant in 2020, a year with lots of rain and plenty of nitrogen) and later matured for 18 months. This year feels somewhere between Jura and Burgundy, with a little more ripeness, a touch of honey and pollen and a soft, gentle texture. It develops very slowly in the glass, so I guess it's also going to age nicely in bottle. They don't use any added sulfur in this wine. Only 498 bottles were filled in March 2022."