Mariona Vendrell and Albert Canela are the couple behind this small project to make low-intervention wines in the DO Conca de Barberà, a region between mountains in the province of Tarragona, bathed by the Francolí and Anguera rivers with cool winters and not too hot summers.
With the idea of becoming a veterinarian, Mariona enrolled at the university. "At that time, I only drank wine with Coca-Cola. I don't come from a family of wine growers, but I discovered oenology and wine caught my interest", explains Mariona, who is now a member of the Regulatory Board.
During her studies she met Albert, whose family has been growing vines in Cabra del Camp for several generations, and with the grapes from the Canela's vineyards, the couple began to make their first wines. "Half of it was vinegar, but we bottled the rest to see what would happen and it didn't go too badly," they recall.
In their early twenties, they applied to become members of the Viver de Celleristes, an innovative project in the town of Barberà de la Conca that offers small wine entrepreneurs a fully-equipped winery where they can make their first cuvées. There was a waiting list, but after two months they were able to move to the Viver, housed in an early 19th-century building that once was the site of Spain's first agricultural cooperative. The centre shares the cooperative spirit, although the producers, who pay a fee according to the number of kilos they handle and the time they stay at the Viver, have to provide their own grapes and barrels.
After five years at Viver de Celleristes, Mariona and Albert moved in 2016 to a garagiste winery in the industrial estate of Pira, a village four kilometres from Barberà, where they make over half a dozen wines with the traditional varieties of the area, mainly Trepat and Parellada plus some Ull de Llebre (Tempranillo) and Garrut (Monastrell). For their Feedback red wine (1,500 bottles, €12.25) they blend the latter two varieties with some Cabernet, planted in the family vineyards when French grapes were deemed superior.
The 20 hectares they work, both owned and leased, are farmed organically. This initially caused them problems because many growers, seeing them so young and inexperienced, did not trust them, even though the couple paid them more than the cooperative. Now they have a network of regular providers who supply them with grapes from old vines in addition to the family vineyards, mainly in Cabra del Camp. This village - where no Trepat was planted after phylloxera - is outside the boundaries of the DO, but as it has historically supplied the Conca producers, the regulations allow its grapes to be used for wines within the appellation.
The main variety for Succés reds is Trepat, which is dominant in La Cuca de Llum (firefly in Catalan), their entry-level red (35,000 bottles, €7.90) from vines between 17 and 45 years old, harvested in October, as Trepat is a late-ripening variety. After a 20-day maceration, the wine is aged in stainless steel and fibre tanks with 5% of stems.
El Mentider (1,500 bottles, €14.95) comes from four old Trepat vineyards planted on clay-limestone soils in Barberà, Sarral and Solivella. Like La Cuca, it is macerated for 45 days and aged in 500 and 600-litre casks for nine months. It is a wine with Mediterranean character, ripe black fruit, spicy notes and good volume, proving that concentrated but elegant wines can also be made from Trepat.
With Trepat vines planted in 1900, they launched El Solà (300 bottles) in 2016, while the previous year's novelty was Patxanga (9,300 bottles, €7.90), a fresh unoaked rosé also made from Trepat.
Mariona and Albert make two whites from Parellada, an aromatic, late-ripening grape variety that has traditionally been used for Cava and of which there are few single-varietal still wines. Parellada Experiencia (14,500 bottles, €9.40) was born in the 2013 vintage and is fermented with the skins (brisado, in local speak), in the region's traditional way. El Pedregal, whose first vintage is 2014, (500 bottles, €21.20) comes from vines over 50 years old planted at 600 m elevation on pebbly soils.
All the wines are made with spontaneous yeasts and without sulphites, although both Mariona and Albert, who between them share all the work in the vineyards, winery and marketing, maintain that they are not radical on this issue: "faced with a challenging vintage, we would not hesitate to use sulphites".
There are no visits to the winery, but Mariona and Albert organise tours of their vineyards where wine lovers can taste some of the couple's wines. They can be contacted through their social media.
