La Cuca de llum 2022 – Succés Vinícola

In 2011 Albert Canela and Mariona Vendrell created Succés Vinícola thanks to a local business initiative in Barberà de la Conca aimed at helping young people start their own agricultural business project. Six years later, in 2016, after having acquired to some very old vineyards in the area, the young couple bought their own cellar in the small village Pira.

Succés Vinícola comes from the word "Succés" in Catalan, which means an event or something that happens when you least expect it, and THIS was it!

Since then the names of each of their new wines have reflected a special event in their lives, or something they feel when following the wine from the vines in the fields to the to wine in the glass.

Conca de Barberà is located in North of Tarragona in Catalonia. All of Albert and Marionas vineyards belong to the villages Barberà de la Conca, Sarral, Cabra del Camp and Solivella. The vineyards are mostly planted with the indigenous Catalan grape varieties Parrelada and Trepat, some of which are more than 100 years old, but they also have a tiny plot of Cabernet Sauvignon. The altitude of their vineyards is between 450 and 700 meters above sea level and the majority of the vineyards have sub-soils composed of clay and limestone, with the exception of their Pedregal vineyard which used to be a river bed and is thus consists of river cobbles.

Mariona and Albert practice organic viticulture and tends to their vineyards with care and respect. Even though the Tarragona climate is hot and dry, they benefit from high altitude and “poor” soils and generally produce very low yields. The grapes are handpicked in small boxes and selected manually, and all fermentations are made with indigenous yeasts in steel tanks and naturally stabilized by the cool temperatures in the cellar during late autumn and winter. The vinification method they choose depends on the age of the vineyard and the quality of the grapes, but as a general rule the younger vines are used in the table wines and are aged on steel tanks, where the oldest vines that are harvested in sites with altitude and interesting and varying terroirs, are aged in used wooden barrels. None of Albert and Marionas wines are sulphured and only the whites and rosés that are not barrel aged are very gently filtered.