Michael W. Salverda

I made my first wines in 2021, two whites from Priorat, a region that had captured my heart years before. Then I gave myself a challenge: a still Chardonnay from the Massís del Garraf, where Chardonnay usually ends up in sparkling wine, good enough to stand next to serious Chardonnay from anywhere.

It took longer than I planned. In 2022 a deer ate the buds of the Chardonnay I had been promised. I was given old Xarel·lo vineyards in Olivella instead, and wild boar got to the grapes before I could. The next parcel, in L’Arboçar, was flattened by hail the size of tennis balls. I made no wine that year. In 2023 I finally made my first Chardonnay and released it as an ancestral called El Chardo, though I was still looking for the wine I really wanted to make. Only in 2024 did the wines reach the quality I was after, and those are the ones I released.

The limestone of the Garraf gave the wines a clear, mineral, salty character, and that pulled me towards the local grapes: Xarel·lo, Macabeu, Garnatxa and Sumoll, all with the same mineral thread.

Stellenbosch came through family visits to Cape Town and a long obsession with Chenin Blanc from there. Today I work with growers on Chenin, Cabernet Franc, Cabernet Sauvignon, Cinsault, Syrah and Verdelho. I pick when the wines will stay fresh and the reds are properly ripe, and I handle the grapes gently, so that destemming, whole bunches or whole berries follow what the site and the season ask for.

Let the land do the talking, and get out of the way in the cellar.

In the Garraf I work the vineyards together with my friend Lluís, whose family has farmed that land for generations. In Stellenbosch I work with growers I trust, on a small set of blocks I return to every year. In both places I guide the wines lightly and trust the process.