Anna Espelt

Anna is the last in a long line of farm­ers from the Em­pordà re­gion –the Es­pelt fam­ily– who have long farmed an area of light soils that can only be used for the cul­ti­va­tion of vine­yards and olive groves.

She began her ca­reer study­ing bi­ol­ogy and oenol­ogy, trav­el­ling to see how wine is made else­where in the world, and get­ting her­self an MBA. The Es­pelts have al­ways been in­volved in grow­ing grapes, so when Anna started work­ing, she nat­u­rally ended up in the vine­yard and got in­volved in viti­cul­ture. Five years ago she took over the man­age­ment of the firm.

For Anna, the vines and wine­grow­ing are a way of life, but one in which things hap­pen slowly. There is only one har­vest every year, and any de­ci­sions made will not nec­es­sar­ily pro­duce a re­sult for years to come. One of her pri­or­i­ties at the head of the firm has been a pro­ject to re­dis­cover the best local ter­rain, where the right com­bi­na­tion of soil and cli­mate can en­sure the high­est qual­ity grapes. A lot of these soils have often been lost over the years but re­cov­er­ing them means the re­sult­ing wines will be among the best that Em­pordà can offer.

Anna has also in­tro­duced or­ganic wine­grow­ing on the es­tate, and it now ac­counts for 80 hectares of the al­most 200 that they under cul­ti­va­tion. Re­spect for the land is thus at the heart of Anna’s work, while the win­ery works to extol the virtues of local grape va­ri­eties that had been ne­glected for many years:

1. Com­post sam­ples: We need these so as to choose which will be used to fer­tilise the vine­yards.

2. Prun­ing shears: This tool is es­sen­tial for cut­ting back the vines when they are still green, for ex­am­ple.

3. Cut­ting: This is a sam­ple taken from last win­ter’s prun­ing of the vines.

4. Speak­ers: Music is es­sen­tial for in­spi­ra­tion!

5. Wine sam­ples: These are taken from dif­fer­ent tanks and bar­rels for test­ing.

6. Glasses: These are what we use for try­ing out the dif­fer­ent blends

7. Corkscrew: We wouldn’t get far with­out one.

8. Spi­toon: This makes sure things don’t get too heady while tast­ing the wines.

9. De­canter: It al­ways bet­ter to aer­ate the wine, which al­lows it to ac­quire its true taste.

10. Pipette: This used for tak­ing sam­ples from the bar­rels.

11. Cork sam­ple: We only use top qual­ity cork.

12. Sculp­tures of Cata­lan chefs: They in­clude Fermí Puig, the Roca broth­ers, Juli Soler, Fer­ran Adrià and Sergi Arola.

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