Raventos i Blanc – Manuel Raventós Mágnum 2003

Produced since 1991, this sparkling wine was created by Manuel Raventós, the founder of Raventós i Blanc.

In 2001, Manuel Raventós and his son Pepe decided to grow this sparkling wine on two specific plots of the Raventós i Blanc estate: el Clos del Serral and Creueta del Coll.

El Clos del Serral occupies a north-facing hillside with heavy loam soil. The vines were planted in 1945 and yield Xarel·lo grapes. The training method is goblet pruning, with each vine grown on an individual stake.

The grape variety grown in Creueta del Coll is Parellada. The soil in this plot is sandy loam. These vines date from 1973 and are goblet-pruned for low yields.

Harvest 2003:

A hot but rainy year which was very demanding on the vines. The average temperature for the climatological year was 15.7ºC (average annual temperature 15.3ºC), with rainfall of 672 mm (average annual rainfall 520 mm) and rain during the harvest (144 mm over 10 rainy days).

Grapes:

80% Xarel·lo harvested on 12th September.
20% Parellada harvested on 19th September.

Vinification:

The grapes are harvested by hand and rapidly delivered to the winery, where they are processed via a gravity flow system. At each stage of the production process the atmosphere is controlled by dry ice.

The grapes are slow-pressed at low pressures, with the must fractioned into its various qualities.

Static clarification at low temperature.

Primary fermentation is in small inox vats where the grapes from each plot are separately fermented.

Assemblage and secondary fermentation take place in the bottle, where the wine is aged for 7 years with the bottle in the neck-down position, followed by hand-racked clarification.

Disgorging date indicated on rear label.
888 bottles produced.

Shared by Susana Portabella