In 1997 he was crowned Spain's best sommelier. Enric Soler could have settled into a comfortable life – instead, in 2004 he inherited a vineyard and dared to start afresh. His grandfather had planted it with Xarel·lo in 1945, on the site of an airfield from the Spanish Civil War. With around four hectares and 10,000 bottles a year, everything remains artisanal. He has been farming biodynamically since 2005. What drives him? The conviction that Xarel·lo can hold its own alongside the finest white wines in the world.
More about Enric Soler
From sommelier to winemaker
Spain’s best sommelier in 1997 – a title that opens doors. For fourteen years, Enric Soler ran a tasting room in Barcelona, sampling the world’s great wines, and he knew exactly what was missing: a vineyard of his own. When his grandfather died in 2004, he faced a choice – sell the inherited plot or farm it himself. He chose the gamble. In Sabanell, a hamlet in Alt Penedès near Barcelona, he took over Cal Raspallet, a Catalan farmhouse dating from the late nineteenth century. In the cellar beneath it: space for his first barrels.
The Xarel·lo vines his grandfather had planted in 1945 were almost sixty years old by then – and Enric recognised their potential. A grape variety that is usually lost in Cava or masked by too much wood was finally going to show what it could do here.
Vinya dels Taus – the vineyard of the moles
The name of his flagship wine tells a story: Vinya dels Taus means “vineyard of the molehills” in Catalan. Anyone who visits the plot understands immediately why – at certain times of year, the ground is strewn with them. This does no harm to the old vines. Their roots reach deep into a subsoil of sand, silt and clay, where they find water and nutrients even in dry years.
This vineyard covers just 0.89 hectares and offers a spectacular view of the rugged Montserrat mountains in the background. The Mediterranean Sea, acting as a climatic buffer, lies only 30 kilometres away. The bush vines stand at around 250 metres above sea level and are not irrigated; cool nights preserve the acidity – an advantage that Familia Nin-Ortiz in nearby Priorat also knows how to exploit. It is no coincidence: Ester Nin, the woman behind Clos Erasmus and her own estate, has been advising Enric on vinification for years.
Biodynamics and Burgundian ambitions
Enric has worked biodynamically since 2005 – the ladybirds on the gnarled vines are no accident. The harvest is carried out by hand into 15-kilo crates, fermentation is spontaneous with wild yeasts, without any corrections to the must. In the cellar, he experiments with various vessels: concrete eggs in which the Malvasia des Istiu ferments, large wooden casks from the Austrian cooperage Stockinger in which the Improvisació 2024 aged on the lees for nine months, the cellar’s oldest 300-litre casks for the Espenyalluchs, and French casks from Burgundian cooperages, some new, for the Nun.
The Nun Vinya dels Taus marked a turning point for still Xarel·lo in Penedès: Burgundian ambition, maturation in oak with ageing potential, rapid success among sommeliers. The Espenyalluchs dispenses with the concrete egg and opts for a more purist, mineral mouthfeel – almost saline, cool, with a depth that needs time.
Small, precise, uncompromising
From one wine and 2,000 bottles at the outset, production has grown to four wines and a good 10,000 bottles – more than two decades later, still a micro-estate. The wines regularly sell out quickly, and the ratings in Wine Advocate and Guía Peñín are high. Anyone who lets a bottle of Nun mature in the cellar will be rewarded: complexity and freshness that unfold over the years.
Enric Soler has proved what he suspected as a sommelier: Xarel·lo can hold its own alongside the finest white wines in the world.