Partida Creus

Partida Creus
Antonella Gerona & Massimo Marchiori
Catalonia, Spain

We met Antonella and Massimo at their bodega in Bonastre, one hour from Barcelona in the province of Tarragona, Catalonia.

Massimo and Antonella are originally from Italy and trained as architects. They designed and built their winery themselves. Around 2000 they moved outside Barcelona to start farming and produce vegetables and fruit. Massimo says the quality of veg and fruit at the time wasn’t good at all in the area. A small vineyard came along with the piece of land they bought and they started to make wine just for themselves. As with vegetables and fruit, they did not agree with using pesticides in wine growing or any additives in wine making.

The first grape variety they discovered was Sumoll, a red grape that was abandoned by Spanish winemakers in favour of French varieties. They made it their mission to find more indigenous grape varieties such as Garrut, Trepat, Bobal and Cartoixa and started to buy abandoned parcels with old vines or replanted forgotten grape varieties. Bobal has a special story since Massimo got offered an abandoned plot of Bobal bush vines 400 km away from Bonastre in Narboneta. Despite the distance, he could not resist and took on this challenge to cultivate Bobal as well.

Gradually and naturally they officially started producing wine and grew their production over time. They vinify without any additives and do not filter.

It was such a pleasure to visit Antonella and Massimo. One is immediately captivated by Massimo’s never ending enthusiasm and the sparkle in his eye, and by Antonella’s warm welcome.

VN white and red are their baseline cuvées, meant to be affordable for everyone. Both white and red with a short skin maceration and fermented in steel tanks, while their single variety bottlings are matured in small and large oak barrels. They also make a fascinating range of Ancestrals: from AA which uses a different grape vaiety every year, to a white ancestral XL from Xarel-lo, a red Garrut GT Ancestral and many more …