MWS Parcelarios

One site, one grape, and as little as possible between the two.

Parcelarios is what came after the year I made no wine. Lluís, a friend and the grower behind these vineyards, had always given me Chardonnay and some Xarel·lo. Then in 2024, weeks before harvest, a farmer elsewhere in Penedès, whose grapes I had planned to buy, told me they would only be machine-harvested. I pick whole bunches by hand and press them whole, so that was a no, and I asked Lluís if he had anything else. He had an old-vine Macabeu plot and some Sumoll in Olivella, and I took both.

Since then we work these vineyards together, and I think that is why it works. Lluís knows this land far better than I ever will, and I bring a more technical approach. When you make the wine and work with the grapes over a few vintages, you start to understand what a vineyard needs. I take that, and the style of wine I want to make, and let both guide the work we do in the vines.

Everything I make now comes from the Massís del Garraf, a corner of Penedès where the wines are unlike the rest of the region. Each one is a single grape from a single parcel, on limestone with sand and some clay: old Xarel·lo and Macabeu in the valley beside L’Arboçar, Chardonnay on the dry, rugged hill before the village. I pick by hand, press gently and let the wines ferment on their own. What I am after is balance, with acidity, minerality and quiet fruit doing the talking, not weight or oak.

These vineyards have taught me to wait. I used to be afraid of picking too late. Now, if the grapes need two more days, they get two more days, and I trust it will be fine.

All wines from Garraf are ecological.