Raventos I Blanc Conca del Riu Anoia Brut Nature “Manuel Raventos” 2017 750ml

The bright golden-colored 2017 Manuel Raventós Negra has a complex nose of baked apples, spicy and nuanced. This is the personal selection that Manuel Raventós makes from the best wines each vintage to produce age-worthy wines. In 2017, which started wet and finished warm and dry, it was produced with 70% Xarel.lo and 20% Macabeo from vines that were already certified organic. It fermented in stainless steel and was kept with the lees in concrete for nine months, after which time, it was put in bottle to referment and age with lees for no less than 70 months. It has a beautiful, developed nose, obviously more oxidative but time has given it great complexity and elegance. The bubbles have integrated and shrunk in size and quantity, giving it a silky texture—texture more than anything. It only has 1.6 grams of residual sugar and finishes dry and long. It’s a wine that gives a lot of pleasure. 2,125 bottles and 158 magnums produced. It was disgorged in November 2024, the bottling date printed on the back label.

• Country: Spain
• Region: Cataluna
• Appellation: Cava
• Size: 750ml
• Alcohol by Vol: 13.0%

Varietal

Champagne Blend

The sparkling wines of Champagne have been revered by wine drinkers for hundreds of years, and even today they maintain their reputation for excellence of flavor and character, and are consistently associated with quality, decadence, and a cause for celebration. Their unique characteristics are partly due to the careful blending of a small number of selected grape varietals, most commonly Chardonnay and Pinot Noir. These grapes, blended in fairly equal quantities, give the wines of Champagne their wonderful flavors and aromas, with the Pinot Noir offering length and backbone, and the Chardonnay varietal giving its acidity and dry, biscuity nature. It isn’t unusual to sometimes see Champagne labeled as ‘blanc de blanc’, meaning it is made using only Chardonnay varietal grapes, or ‘blanc de noir’, which is made solely with Pinot Noir.