Winemaker Notes
Professional Ratings
-
Robert Parker's Wine Advocate
2014 was classical Mediterranean vintage after a much cooler 2013. The 2014 Mas del Serral comes from the oldest vines they have, mostly Xarel.lo with a handful of Bastard Negre grapes, cropped from a long-cycle year when the grapes developed full aromas and flavors. The yeasts were selected from the same vineyard, fermented in concrete and put to referment in bottle. It has a phenomenal nose, subtle, elegant and nuanced. It has a very textured palate with abundant, very effervescent and small bubbles that fill your mouth and lift up the wine, making it very long. It has 12.09% alcohol, with a pH of 3.02 and 6.5 grams of acidity, without any added sugar. It shows terrific balance and is precise, clean and focused, complex, elegant and long, finishing very dry and with a chalky sensation. All the bottles have the disgorgement date handwritten on the label. In 2014, there were 2,500 bottles and 400 magnums. The bottle I tasted was disgorged the sixth of March 2025, 10 days before I tasted it. It was put in bottle in June 2012 after it spent a few months with lees in concrete eggs. This should be long lived. I also tasted from a bottle of the 2007, which is holding nicely, more polished and with smaller bubbles.
Representing the topmost expression of a Champagne house, a vintage Champagne is one made from the produce of a single, superior harvest year. Vintage Champagnes account for a mere 5% of total Champagne production and are produced about three times in a decade. Champagne is typically made as a blend of multiple years in order to preserve the house style; these will have non-vintage, or simply, NV on the label. The term, "vintage," as it applies to all wine, simply means a single harvest year.
A superior source of white grapes for the production of Spain’s prized sparkling wine, Cava, the Penedes region is part of Catalunya and sits just south of Barcelona. Medio Penedès is the most productive source of the Cava grapes, Macabeo, Xarel-lo, and Parellada. Penedes also grows Garnacha and Tempranillo (here called Ull de Llebre in Catalan), for high quality reds and rosès.