Sot Lefriec Blanc 2021

Penedès-born Irene Alemany and Breton Laurent Corrio, met while studying and working in Burgundy. In 1999, they made their first wine, Sot Lefriec red, from tiny plots of vines belonging to Irene’s family. From the very first vintage, it won plaudits from wine critics and soon became a cult wine, making it one of the first garage wines to come out of Penedès. Not thinking that the experience was of any great importance, their lives were to change nevertheless. Having, as they said, “put the cart before the horse”, they came and settled definitively in Penedès.

While making that first wine, they enjoyed total freedom and offered a new version of Penedès red, getting their inspiration from Burgundy rather than their neighbours.

Gradually they began to introduce white varieties to their range, one of them a Xarel·lo, whose expression made a big impression on them. They kept on the same path, maintaining a purist approach, never following the latest fads and always determined that their wines should reflect the terroir from which they came.

Building on the experience they had gained over the years, their close connection to the land and their special introspective approach (“internal work” according to Irene), they took another stride forward with the Xarel·lo variety, a grape which they felt conveyed sensations of purity and resilience.

Sot Lefriec Blanco 2021 comes from a plot planted 67 years ago on shallow limestone soils containing marine fossils. The 2021 vintage was very cool. The fermentation was carried out in 500-litre French oak casks and, after a racking in December 2022, the wine was bottled during a waning moon in January 2023.

For Irene and Laurent, “this wine embodies the efforts, the struggle and the emotions involved in making it, along with the hope that those who drink it will not be left indifferent”.