Ca N'Estruc

Rows kept close to Montserrat

Plot by plot, Siscu Martí farms as winemaker at Ca N'Estruc in Esparreguera, reading Montserrat before the cellar receives a grape. He has carried the estate as farmer and winemaker from 1980, also as heredero y actual propietario, so the work begins with the long view of ownership and the nearer pressure of a season. The house stands on a mountainside property whose wine record reaches to 1548, with estate records from 1574, and the modern winery dates to 1990. That double register matters here: old ground, modern decisions, no need to make one cancel the other.

Martí's bench is not only in the cellar. It is the vineyard row, the pruning choice, the picking call, the blend held back until its components have earned the same line. Ca N'Estruc works within DO Catalunya, with its estate vineyards on sandy, rocky and clay-limestone soils at around 165 m altitude, protected by Montserrat from cold northern winds. The varieties tell the method plainly: Xarel·lo, Macabeo and White Grenache beside Chardonnay; Grenache, Carignan, Syrah and Petit Verdot for the reds. L'Equilibrista, Idoia, Ca N'Estruc Xarel·lo and Ca N'Estruc Negre carry that range without leaving the slope.

Assemblies before the final wine

The estate owns 22 ha of vineyard and also works with local growers, keeping the scale small enough for separation to matter. Grapes move into stainless steel tanks, where musts can remain apart by vineyard, vine age and variety before the final assemblies. The method gives Martí more than cleanliness; it gives him pieces with edges, so the blend can be built rather than softened into sameness.

The farming has moved by stated steps: organic work began in 2012, and biodynamic methods followed in 2019. In the vineyard, new plantings run north to south on trellises, with the first wire 80 cm from the soil for ventilation and to reduce the need for pesticide treatments. Older vines are redirected to trellises in the globelé system, a Rhône-linked form used here for growth and fruit control. In the cellar, French and American oak barrels of different capacities and toast levels give another set of small adjustments, with Dargaud & Jaegle, Boutes and Seguin Moreau among the named coopers.

The cellar under the saw mountain

The place feels like a working Catalan estate before it feels like a tasting address. Montserrat sits close, its serrated rock not as scenery alone but as shelter and weather-maker. The cellar and vineyard read as one program: quiet, rural, production-led, with the room taking its cue from the rows outside rather than from display.

That restraint suits the wines. L'Equilibrista can draw on Syrah, Carignan and Garnacha, while Idoia keeps family in the label itself, named for Martí's daughter. The line to follow is still the one already in his hands: Catalan fruit, separated before assembly, then brought back together under the name Ca N'Estruc Xarel·lo.