Familia Torres adds a new wine in its Clos Ancestral range, which explores Catalan winegrowing heritage and brings ancestral varieties to consumers. After launching a couple of years ago a Penedès red wine made with the pre-phylloxera variety Moneu and the native Catalan varieties Ull de Llebre (Tempranillo) and Garnacha, the line is now expanding to include an organic white wine made mostly with the ancestral variety Forcada. This wine will also come under the Penedès Appellation of Origin and is the fifth wine of the project to recover ancestral varieties that Familia Torres began 40 years ago.
Forcada is the only white ancestral variety – of the more than 50 recovered by Familia Torres – that, for now, has the potential to produce great wines and cope with climate change, as it is a long-season variety that ripens slowly and maintains a pronounced acidity. Authorized for use by the DO Penedès in 2018, Forcada also features in another Familia Torres wine, a small-production experimental single variety version intended for high-end restaurants.
Clos Ancestral Blanco 2022 mainly comes from Mas Palau, a vineyard with deep, reddish chalky clay soils located at over 500 metres above sea level in Alt Penedès, far from the maritime influence. Here, Forcada ripens between late September and early October, so it is usually the last white variety to be harvested, and it stands out for its delicate, fresh aroma. The blend for this wine is completed with a small percentage of the native variety Xarel·lo, contributing to its aromatic complexity with herbal notes and reinforcing its local identity.
The two varieties are harvested and vinified separately, with minimal intervention to respect the most authentic character of each one. Both the fermentation as well as the ageing on lees for three months take place in stainless steel tanks. Clos Ancestral Blanco 2022 is a fresh, aromatic wine where the fruit stands out over a background of fragrant herbs. Direct and lively on the palate, its pleasant mouthfeel comes thanks to the ageing on lees. The 2022 vintage in Penedès was characterized by the lack of rainfall and some heatwaves during the summer, but also by the excellent grape health status.
Miguel Torres Maczassek, from the fifth generation of Familia Torres, has a fondness for Forcada. ‘It’s a variety that helps us to recover our winegrowing heritage and it’s very interesting from the winemaking perspective, especially because it maintains an excellent acidity, even in warm vintages,’ he says, adding ‘This is the only white variety we’re planting in Penedès because it will allow us to continue to make great wines in a context of climate change’.
Clos Ancestral Blanco is the latest result of the project to recover ancestral varieties that Miguel A. Torres began in the early 1980s for philanthropic reasons, to contribute to recovering Catalonia’s pre-phylloxera winegrowing heritage. In recent years, the fifth generation of the wine family, with Miguel and Mireia Torres, have given fresh impetus to the project, to identify not only the varieties with great winemaking potential, but also those that adapt to climate change best, and to turn them into wines that can reach the market.
Besides the two Clos Ancestral wines, Familia Torres also uses recovered ancestral varieties in Grans Muralles (DO Conca de Barberà), a blend of Querol, Garró, and other native varieties, and in two small-production experimental single variety wines, Forcada (DO Penedès) and Pirene, from the Pyrenean foothills.
