Montsant Blanc, 'Venus de Cartoixà'

Score

95+

"Next to the skin-contact whites (Dido), the 2020 Venus de Cartoix… feels very different. This remains a white from direct pressing of the bunches, fermented without skins. 2020 was a very unusual and challenging year. They lost most of the crop to mildew, so they got a very small crop of very concentrated grapes; the juice is very intense and concentrated but silky and balanced, as the plants had enough leaves and few grapes to ripen. It feels a little more like a Priorat this year. This year, it has 14.5% alcohol (like in 2011, but that year they harvested later); all the wines from 2020 have higher alcohol. They only had juice to ferment one 300-liter barrel and one glass demijohn that fermented very fast (a constant in 2020, a year with lots of rain and plenty of nitrogen) and later matured for 18 months. This year feels somewhere between Jura and Burgundy, with a little more ripeness, a touch of honey and pollen and a soft, gentle texture. It develops very slowly in the glass, so I guess it's also going to age nicely in bottle. They don't use any added sulfur in this wine. Only 498 bottles were filled in March 2022."

Score

92

"The 2020 Venus de Cartoixa is made from 100% Xarel·lo sourced from Montsant. Yellow in hue, it reveals ripe citrus aromas intertwined with fennel and wild herbs. Dry, rich and refreshing, it offers a faintly compact mouthfeel that leads to an intense, geeky finish. This is a modernist white for the region."