This year, 2024, marks the first decade of Anna Martí Pitart’s project overflowing with enthusiasm, purity and sensitivity. It is her BI, her personal initiative developed in the Esparreguera winery, with Montserrat as a backdrop, by her father Siscu Martí (Ca N’Estruc). BI was born artisanally in 2014 in a corner of the winery, with a wine from old vines from the slopes of the Montserrat mountain. Theirs are wines made only with grapes, fermented with their own yeasts. They want to be “a faithful reflection of their land.” Anna Martí says that “each bottle is unique.” The label is a reinterpretation of the first ones that adorned the bottles of Ca N’Estruc, linked to viticulture since the 16th century (the family estate has been documented since 1548).
Anna Martí was born next to the winery, and grew up among vineyards and barrels. She has worked in the world of wine since she was 18, in Vila Viniteca, linked to the commercial side. She initially combined work with studies. Today she is a lawyer and sommelier. One day during the 2014 harvest, after harvesting the xarel·lo, she separated a portion of the grapes and began shelling them by hand to make a wine that she would call BI. She says “that’s how the party started!” She declares herself a lover of wines made with soul, those that “make you smile, hug you.” And she adds that “I make wine because I was born in a winery, I have always drunk it and, at a given moment in my life, I needed to connect with a more natural environment, to find myself, the peasant part of me.” She also recognizes that she makes wine “out of ecological awareness, since making wine gives you the opportunity to build a better world, ensuring a healthy vineyard without the need for chemistry, just natural medicine.”
Until 1960 the farm was used for viticulture and livestock. They cultivated vineyards, cereals, fruit trees, olive trees and a garden, which they combined with raising free-range animals such as pigs, rabbits or chickens. They were self-sufficient, and also had an oil mill, a bread oven, presses and a wine cellar. It was Siscu Martí, after convincing his suspicious father Francisco Martí Estruch, who turned to wine making, betting on quality. Since 2012 they have been working their vineyards ecologically, and since 2019 they have followed biodynamic viticulture practices. Ca N’Estruc is the first winery registered in the DO Catalunya. They have 22 hectares of vineyards
in the propiety. Today Anna Martí is the spearhead in terms of making minimal intervention wines in her family winery. It does not work with sulfur or other additives. She neither filters nor clarifies, and bottles solely by gravity. The farm enjoys a microclimate that protects it from the cold winds from the north thanks to the natural barrier created by the Montserrat mountain. This protection allows you to enjoy cool summers and mild winters, with an average annual temperature of 14.1ºC. The alluvial, clayey-calcareous and gravel terrain favors the quality of the grapes with low yields. The plantations are oriented from north to south to optimize the use of the sun, studying the appropriate planting framework in each plot according to the variety. All their grapes are harvested by hand and each of their plots are vinified separately.
Their latest novelty is Ca N’Estruc BI Xarel·lo, Macabeu, Parellada 2023. It is a natural wine suitable for vegans made with the three traditional white varieties of Penedès (80% in a vineyard planted in 1957 in gravel and red clay soils, and at 270 meters of altitude. It just came on the market. Anna Martí states that “to make it easy, we could say that xarel·lo gives us structure, body and acidity; The parellada gives us finesse, lightness and liveliness; and the macabeo gives us elegance and balance.”
The 2023 vintage was marked by extreme drought. Despite this, their vineyards responded “in an extraordinary way.” They believe this was due to several reasons. The first is because they are strains grown in glass with a very wide planting framework. On the other hand, for working in accordance with the practices of biodynamic agriculture, which has allowed them to “enhance the microbiology of the soil to improve its water retention capacity, also having more efficient roots to absorb water.” This appears to have been decisive in helping combat the challenging drought, “making our plants more resilient to climate change.” The summer of 2023 was extremely hot and dry, but at the end of August they had a small downpour and a few days later they began the harvest. The absence of rain meant that the incidence of fungi such as downy mildew or powdery mildew was minimal or non-existent. Therefore, the health of the grapes was extraordinary. The persistent drought of recent years has caused the yields of its vineyards to decrease significantly. They harvested on August 31 manually.
Ca N’Estruc BI Xarel·lo, Macabeu, Parellada 2023 is a natural white wine without DO. Its whole grapes were pressed directly without being destemmed or stepped on. Only 50% of the first juice obtained (flower must) was used to avoid oxidation and obtain a better quality must. The alcoholic fermentation was carried out with native yeasts in a concrete egg with a capacity of 1,700 liters, without residual sugars remaining. Aging was carried out for three months in concrete tanks. It was bottled manually by gravity on November 30, 2023, without fining, without filtering and without added sulfites. Of this first vintage, only 2,260 bottles have been made.
Of a beautiful, very faint orange color, and with a slight turbidity. Of medium aromatic intensity, clean, young and precise. With notes of peach, blood orange and a marked base of fennel. Very Mediterranean. In the mouth it is fine, elegant, direct, with a touch of somewhat bitter raw almond on a bed of white fruit (apple and pear) and a marked final saline character, which makes you salivate. He is sapid. It dances in the mouth with liveliness thanks to its good acidity. Shows a good balance. It is a very transparent wine, like its bottle, and does not show any of the deviations that many natural wines express. It opens in the glass. Better to enjoy it in a burgundy glass.
Its author says that its aromatic expression is fresh and that “initially, after opening the bottle, it reveals flinty notes that disappear but will return over time.” It presents varietal notes such as anise and Mediterranean herbs. Citrus fruits predominate, but there are also fruits such as pear and white flowers. Anna Martí explains that “it takes a turn with each turn of the glass. There is a sea in the background, an air of sea breeze, which makes us think that on any rock in Montserrat you can find the fossil of a mollusk that reminds us that where the massif is now was actually an entire sea millions of years ago.” And she adds that “it is expansive in the mouth, it flows like the flow of a river, it floods your mouth with subtle notes of butter with lemon due to the memory of aging on the lees of the wine. It has a liveliness and joy that puts a smile on your face, a saltiness that makes you salivate and invites you to eat, and a slightly bitter finish that refreshes you.
It leaves you with a mineral aftertaste that comes and goes like waves.” Anna Martí likes to enjoy her wine with a fisherman’s casserole or with a cheese board. It is also ideal with some oysters from the Ebro Delta, with red shrimp grilled, with a mushroom risotto, with baked white fish or with pasta dishes such as spaghetti with almond pesto, Italian dried tomato and arugula.
Anna Martí has ??no doubt that the Penedès area has “enormous potential”, and that it also “has young people who want to do things well.” In this sense, she points out that “there are many ruined vineyards to recover, vineyards that for many years have been subjected to conventional and extensive agriculture.” She sees a way forward, therefore, recovering this viticultural heritage and “practicing more careful and respectful agriculture than has been done until now.” At Ca N’Esruc they are committed to sustainability and respect for the environment. They have installed photovoltaic solar panels with a power of 200kW in their facilities. With BI they already produce around 6,000 bottles per year (they started a decade ago with 2,000), of which they export 50%. The United States, Canada and Norway are its main international markets. Its wines are distributed by Vila Viniteca.
