Producer Celler Escoda-Sanahuja

SPAIN, CATALONIA

The Celler Escoda-Sanahuja is located in the village of Prenafeta in a suggestive side valley of the largest Conca di Barbera, in Catalonia. At the helm of the company we find Joan Ramon Escoda Martinez, who after working as an oenologist in a large winery in Catalonia and traveling around France, joined the biodynamic and natural wine movement. In 1999 he started a project in his wife's village, Prenafeta, and in 2005 he began producing wines without added sulphites, a method that continues today. Pioneer of natural wine, with his friend Laureano Serres he founded PVN, the first association of natural wines in Spain. Today Joan Ramon, together with his family, cultivates over ten hectares of olive groves, almond trees and vines, as well as a vegetable garden for his own livelihood. There is a small farm with chickens, turkeys, sheep, cows and horses. In the vineyard, the cultivated varieties are diverse and range from macabeo, to sumoll blanc and sumoll tinto, to trepat (a red grape variety typical of the Conca), up to garnacha blanca and negra and carignan. However, there is no shortage of foreign ones, from nearby France, which Joan particularly loves and with which she is at ease in winemaking such as chenin, pinot noir, cabernet franc and merlot. From the very beginning, the vineyards of Escoda-Sanahuja have been cultivated biodynamically using organic preparations made on site. In the cellar, the wines are produced in a completely natural way and as simple as possible, and sulphites are completely banned. Joan is a volcano of ideas and has an exceptional sensitivity that led him to experiment in the cellar with different containers (including the amphora) and techniques so that now the production is natural on all wines.