The cultivation of a vineyard is, in essence, an exercise in order. It means creating a special harmony, an internal coherence. There is no room for excess or disarray, everything has its own reason for being. A vineyard speaks with its own voice. You cannot impose, you have to let it be. That is where the real work lies: to listen attentively, to work from an in-depth knowledge of the place itself and with the desire never to alter the natural dialogue between the grape, the clay and limestone soil and the hands that work it.
In the vineyard, everything has meaning, even doing nothing. It is important to let the vineyard rest after harvesting. The ground remains unturned. Nothing more is asked of it. The vines are bush trained, pruned with precision; Xarel·lo requires careful attention and its voice must be heard. The vineyard is worked only when it is appropriate, using sustainable agricultural techniques and a carefully attuned eye. Everything points to a specific way of doing things: massal selection that eschews aesthetic considerations, a graft on a forgotten rootstock, a pile of small stones that supports the branches of an eighty-year-old vine, the vegetation that grows spontaneously between the rows of vines. All vineyards are worked in the same way, because that is only one way.
It is in the small imperfections that the truth of the landscape, the identity of the grape is hidden, that subtle difference that gives the wine its soul.
Some discoveries change everything. They have an inherent force that does not need to be tested. They come upon us silently. Like a beat that becomes amplified within one’s memory until, in time, it becomes the rhythm of life. Before we understand its magnitude, we are instinctively aware of its strength. A clarity of essence, a beauty that is without adornment but is rooted in both sincerity and simplicity, a beauty that can only be seen by those who are willing to devote body and soul to work for twenty years with a grape whose quality is its honesty.
An obsession with Xarel·lo can only be born out of a deep certainty. It was clear from the start that this was going to be a tool for exploring the characteristics of this place. Its acidity, the thickness of its skin, the firmness of its body and spirit allow it to converse naturally with the elements. This is a grape that does not give in, does not bow to pressure. It has memory. After two decades, it is still the only possible form of communication. Because it allows one to talk about land, about depth and persistence, but also about ethics. About an indisputable connection between the place, the hand that tends the vine and time. There is no separation between the person who tends the vines and the person who creates the wine. Because no separation is needed. Xarel·lo is both the starting point and the goal. It is the source, and it is the reason. It is with Xarel·lo, and only Xarel·lo, that the Enric Soler project has created its own savoir faire, a way of looking at and living with the landscape, a way of inhabiting its own small world at the heart of the Penedès plain.
A shoot granted onto old rootstock offers continuity, bringing subtle hints of its origins to its new home.
The material value of a vineyard is not just found in a list of items set out in an inventory. It also comes from the quality of the vine wood, the orientation of a terrace, the way that the vine leaves interact with the light, the delicate touch of the hands that work the vines, the dry stone walls that support the banks surrounding the vineyard, the winding pathways that are only known to those who pass along them each day.
Enric Soler cultivates four hectares of vineyard whose story can only be told by the wine it produces. From here come grapes that do not attempt to imitate but instead offer a faithful expression of what they have experienced, the place where they have laid down their roots
Preserving the landscape, that natural architecture that speaks to us of times gone by, requires determination and a long-term vision. Therefore, when an individual vine succumbs to the passage of time, its place is taken by plant material from the same vineyard, an exercise of memory that provides continuity and ensures that the vineyard’s identity remains intact.
Here, stones provide a prop for older branches that still have a lot to give.
