Mas Candí

Toni Carbó and Ramón Jané, both born and raised in Penedès, Catalonia, have been friends since they were 15 years old. They both grew up among the vines, as did their fathers and grandfathers. Their parents and grandparents sold grapes to big companies in the area, big wine producers who turned them into bulk wines and cava for export. Ramón and Toni started working in their parents’ vineyards after completing their studies in Oenology. From 2002, they turned their restlessness into experimentation from their garage. Every year they made a 300-litre barrel of their own wine, researching, testing, adjusting, playing with different grape varieties.

In 2006, they decided to stop selling their grapes for bag-in-box supermarket wine. Both Toni and Ramón and Mercé (Ramón’s wife) have vineyards in different locations from their own families. In recent years, the wines of all three have been given their own labels to emphasise their origins more. Mercé’s wines under the “Mas Candí” label, Ramón Jané under his own name, and Toni and his wife Anna under “La Salada”, now from their own cellar.

Ramón and Mercé start making their own wine in their cellar under the name ‘Mas Candí’. They want to do justice to nature and the landscape and therefor work with Catalan grape varieties such as xarel.lo, sumoll, roigenc, mandó, cannonau, monica, torbat, parellada and macabeu.

All wines are made with grapes from older vines from plots passed down from generation to generation. These old vines produce smaller grapes with more concentrated aromas.

Ramón and Mercé work from the philosophy of not using chemical fertilisers, insecticides, antifungals or pesticides. They crush pruning waste, leaves that fall from the tendrils and the grass that grows in the vineyard, and use it as compost. Working the vineyards completely biodynamically is not an option, but the effectiveness of the biodynamic preparations they use is increasing because the soil has become more and more healthy as a result of their hard work.

The proximity of the Mediterranean sea brings a cooling breeze and the chalky soil ensures healthy water balance and deep-rooted plants, the local grapes have adapted perfectly to this microclimate over the centuries. All this makes for mineral-rich, fresh, pure wines, often with a salty finish. Wines with a Catalan character!