Manuel Raventós Negra 2011

I tasted the 2011 Manuel Raventós Negra from a regular bottle and from a magnum. This is Manuel Raventós Negra's personal selection of the best wines from each given vintage made the way he learned to do it, tasting and blending, and therefore, the wine is different from year to year. In this warm and Mediterranean 2011, it was 100% Xarello from the north-facing plot they call Clos, which is cooler and has a slower ripening of the grapes, which results in wines with good structure and natural acidity. As with the majority of wines, it's kept with lees for no less than six months after fermenting in stainless steel and then put to re-ferment in bottle, where it was kept in contact with the lees for at least 60 months. It's very smoky and yeasty, warmed and more developed than the other wines I tasted, even the older ones, with perhaps the magnum a little less developed. Yeasty and spicy, with notes of aniseed and fennel, it has a seamless palate with very integrated bubbles and moderate acidity, which corresponds to a warmer and riper year. The magnum was definitively better, with a slower development and a livelier palate. If magnums are better for still wines, for sparkling they are clearly better. There are 2,000 bottles and 667 magnums.