Celler La Salada

Old vines without additions

The press stays light and the yeasts are left to begin their own work; Toni Carbó, winemaker at Celler La Salada in Pla Del Penedes, keeps the cellar close to that first decision. His station in El Pla del Penedès has been his since 2012, when he established the estate around family vineyards that had been worked by hand for generations, without chemicals or ploughing. Before this cellar, he helped build Mas Candí with his best friend and business partner, an apprenticeship in family soils as much as in wine. At La Salada, the lineage runs through farming: the grandfather’s idea of Vi Català, the old vines, the Catalan varieties that carry the place without needing a costume. Carbó’s role is not to polish them into another register. He reads Xarel·lo, Macabeu, Malvasia de Sitges, Sumoll and Grenache Blanc through organic and biodynamic practice, then lets the wine hold its own shape. The estate does not lean on correction. It works by restraint, and restraint here is a method.

Macabeu in steel, Xarel·lo from La Bufarella

The program moves across still whites, reds, orange wines, skin-contact bottlings and pét-nat, with native yeasts and no sulfur additions as part of the house discipline. L'Ermot 2024 is Macabeu, pressed lightly and fermented with its own yeasts in stainless steel, a direct line from fruit to vessel. La Bufarella comes from Xarel·lo grown in a 1.1ha plot planted in 1982, set between Pla del Penedès and the coast. Roig Boig Métode Ancestral 2024 takes a different path: 90% directly pressed grapes, with 10% red grapes macerated for 20 days before pressing. The cellar also works with American oak, French oak, chestnut and acacia, alongside stainless steel and 54L glass demijohns. Those choices do not announce themselves as technique for its own sake. They give Carbó a set of pressures, oxygen, texture, vessel memory, and he chooses according to the wine in front of him.

The cellar and the vineyard stay close

The place has the quiet of a small family estate rather than the choreography of a large house. Around Pla del Penedès, the vineyard remains the first room: Mediterranean light, old family parcels, soils left unploughed, rows held by hand work and biodynamic habit. In the cellar, the mood follows the same line. Stainless steel sits beside wood and glass; fermentations are watched, not forced. Tastings here belong to the vineyard and the cellar, not a separate performance. The wines carry names that keep returning to the site, La Bufarella, Roig Boig Tinto, Roig Boig Métode Ancestral. If there is a next movement to read, it is already in the same materials: Macabeu, Xarel·lo, Sumoll, Malvasia de Sitges, and the 54L glass demijohns.