Turó d’en Mota 2008, best Catalan wine by La Guia de Vins de Catalunya
La Guia de Vins de Catalunya 2023 has selected Turó d’en Mota 2008 as the best Catalan wine, the best sparkling wine and the best Xarel·lo wine among over 1,100 wines and 206 wineries, awarding the vintage a score of 9.86. The experts behind the guide describe this wine as “extraordinary” and “elegant” for its overall balance and harmony, and “mineral” because it evokes the calcareous soil, adding an extra dimension of connection to the land.
The 2008 vintage of Turó d’en Mota is the end result of a year marked by contrasts. After a moderately dry, warm autumn and winter, a rainy spring set the pace in the vineyard. The painstaking work done by the Recaredo team over the whole year yielded healthy clusters with great expressiveness and extraordinary acidity, ideal for careful ageing in the bottle for a minimum of twelve years and 6 months. The result is a harmonious and delicate wine that reveals the most authentic essence of the Mediterranean, with low yields (21.3 hl/ha) of very high-quality fruit – a vibrant vintage with a unique character that blends with the purest and subtlest nuances produced by the passage of time.
La Guia de Vins de Catalunya, a guide to Catalan wines, was launched in 2008 with the aim of informing consumers based on a transparent, rigorous and impartial blind tasting system that scores all the qualities of a wine. According to the experts behind the guide, “The positioning of Corpinnat wines is enviable. They’re the result of a comprehensive approach as the winemakers do everything from pressing the grapes to vinification, carrying out 100% of the production process on the estate.”
Other Recaredo wines – namely, Recaredo Serral del Vell 2016 (9.8), Recaredo Terrers Magnum 2017 (9.53) and Recaredo Terrer 2018 (9.51) – have also been included in the 15th edition of La Guia de Vins de Catalunya. Celler Credo still wines are also rated, earning scores that place them among the top Penedès wines. The highest-scoring wines include Miranius 2021 (9.76), Aloers 2019 (9.75) and Miranius Magnum 2019 (9.73).
Turó d’en Mota: a unique vineyard planted in 1940
Planted in 1940 and bush-trained, the Turó d’en Mota plot was the first sparkling wine vineyard in Spain. The distinctive terrain where it is located – on the northern slope of a hill known as Turó d’en Mota, from which it takes its name – lends consistency and character to Recaredo’s wine project. The vineyard’s soil has a silt loam texture (a balance of silty sands and clays) and is highly developed due to a calcic horizon with significant deposits of carbonate nodules, formed through the concentration of lime in the soil.
Turó d’en Mota 2008 is an exceptional vintage made using grapes harvested from a 0.97-ha vineyard with north-east exposure, sheltered by a forested hill, where part of a 0.55-ha vineyard with south-east exposure has been incorporated. These characteristics make it a special vintage with an exclusive production of 4,317 bottles.
The 2008 vintage of Recaredo Turó de Mota has also been recognised by Robert Parker Wine Advocate as the top-rated wine in Spain, with a score of 97 points. According to the guide’s reviewer, Luis Gutiérrez, “It’s a magnificent white wine with bubbles – completely different, with loads of personality and character.”
