Partida Creus ‘Muz’ Aromatizado (1 LITER)

Location: Spain, Catalunya, Penedès

Winemaker: Massimo Marchiori & Antonella Gerona

Winemaking: The fruit macerates in a neutral alcohol, for 2 moons, with a mixture of herbs from a herbalist friend in Torino. The origin of the recipe comes from the herbalist's great-grandfather, Mr. Carpano, who created the blend back in 1870. A small amount of sugar is added.

From the Importer Selections de la Viña: ‘Muz’ is Massimo and Antonella’s vermouth, with the following formula as base: 1 red barrel, 1 young red, and 1 oxidized white. Varieties often change; Massimo elaborates by tasting what he has in the current aging to maintain a regular style. This is a juicy, Mediterranean red that is perfect behind the bar and served by the carafe with a slight chill.

Massimo Marchiori and Antonella Gerosa are the Italian couple behind Partida Creus. They settled in the Massís de Bonastre in the Baix Penedés around the year 2000. There they started farming all kinds of local foodstuffs but had trouble finding wines made in the same style so they started making their own, recovering old vines of local grape varietals. In most cases, the vineyards were close to abandoned. Whenever they find a new vineyard, they’ll go to the nearby town, find out who the owner is and approach them to buy or at least farm the vineyard, organically of course. People think they’re crazy for doing this as they are very old, low yielding vineyards and in most cases, obsolete grape varietals. Some have been disqualified from D.O. for lack of color, as was the case with Sumoll, others were never even accepted. Now they’re known as the crazy Italians making incredible natural wines with the grapes that all of the locals had written off in exchange for the more ‘international’ varietals.

The couple crafts beautiful wines using such local grapes as Trepat, Sumoll, Garrut, Queixal de Llop, Ull de Perdiu, Garnacha, and Samsó. Their wines are always unfiltered, unfined, with no addition of sulfur at any part of the winemaking process. A common denominator in all of their wines is freshness and precision; all of them are very direct with low alcohol and high acidity which definitely keeps them intact.