2009 Mas del Serral

There is no 2008 vintage of this sparkling white, so we tasted the 2009 Mas del Serral, the second vintage ever produced. It's from a very low-yielding year that only produced 1,800 kilos of grapes from 1.9 hectares of very old vines. This matured with the lees in bottle for no less than 100 months. The signature of this wine is the marine soils where the vines are planted, and they provide very tasty wines with a saline, mineral and marine personality. The wine is from an extreme year yet manages to keeps its poise, and it comes through as fresh and balanced and has a long-lasting finish. This has a special sense of harmony and subtleness, but there's also power and inner strength. This is one of the greatest sparkling wines produced in Spain, and it comes from a superb terroir that produces wines that age very slowly, as it's fresher and younger than many wines that are three or four years older. Because there was so little wine, they decided to bottle it all in magnums, and there are only 849 magnums.