The MontRubí winery is located in l’Avellà, a small neighborhood in the municipality of Font-rubí, in the highest part of the Alt Penedès. This summer they have opened a hotel as a complement to the winemaking and to the restaurant, which have been running for a year.

The winery was founded in 1984. The grandmother and father of Alejo Peris, the current owner, and manager of MontRubí, were pharmacists who had always liked the world of winemaking. Their desire to make a good wine determined them to open a winery. The reason why this winery is located in l’Avellà is due to the fact that the grandmother was a close friend of Paquita Miró Feixes, owner of several farms in this area. Grandmother and father acquired land from the Miró family, as well as several buildings, where they located the winery. With the help of winemaker Josep Queralt, they started the project 35 years ago.

Pioneers worldwide

MontRubí currently cultivates 50 hectares of vineyards. When they started producing they did it through cava. Alejo Peris tells us that by the time of Barcelona Olympic Games, in 1992, the cava sector experienced a surge, but, years later, the great competition and good products on the market, added to price devaluation, forced many small companies to close doors or to reshape: “We reinvented ourselves and began to bet on the recovery of indigenous varieties,” says Alejo Peris.

In 1998, they began researching the native variety of Sumoll and two years later they produced the first 100% Sumoll wine in the world. “It’s our flagship product, and it’s called Gaitus,” says Peris, who explains that Sumoll “is not an easy grape to work with, neither to sell.” But when they decided to recover the Sumoll and make the first monovarietal wine out of this autochthonous grape, “that was the moment when our philosophy as a winery was born”.

Committed to the environment

At the moment, MontRubí has ​​a line of Sumoll on the market, with five different wines, and one with a blend of Grenache and Samsó. The idea of ​​working with local monovarietal wine still guides them, and now they are vinifying Malvasia, despite it is a variety that is often planted along the coast and which is characteristic of Garraf: “We have planted it on a farm, over 500m of altitude, with a continental rather than mediterranean climate. In fact, our intention is to continue making monovarietal wines with local grapes. In black: Sumoll, Grenache and Samsó, and in white: Xarel·lo, Parellada and Macabeu ”.

For four years, all MontRubí lands have been certified as organic farming, “we try to work in the vineyard and in the winery with the minimum mechanical intervention, reducing the carbon footprint as much as possible. We work in a way that respects the environment as much as possible, and as a differentiating element from other wineries, in the new one that was renovated in 2016, we work at different heights which, in addition to a calmer treatment for the vinification process, it allows us to save on pumps use and thus, on energy costs.”

Gastronomic wine tourism

The principles of the winery have focused on three parts: working on the farm, with the utmost respect for the land, with micro plots and organic farming; the second branch, producing quality, organic and vegan wines; and the third, offering high quality enotourism.

As for wine tourism, for a year now, they have opted for a gastronomic enotourism in which “visitors sit around the table, enjoy excellent dishes and taste our quality wines, while they enjoy our vineyards views, well maintained and forming a beautiful garden ”, says Alejo Peris. He explains that the wine tourism project has been expanded with the launch, last September, of a ten-room hotel and of other activities that increase the offer to wine tourists.

Growth

Alejo Peris is in charge of the project since 2017. He is happy to say that since he is  100% dedicated to the project, it has grown from all points of view and that the pandemic has not fully affected them: “We closed the year 2020 with better numbers than in 2019 and, in 2021, we are going to close with better figures than in 2020”. And this is a success for the whole team I work with, from the farmer, to the winemaker, the winery man, the chef, and waiters, all of whom we have been able to reinvent ourselves and adapt to reality ”.

This year, Celler MontRubí has been the winner of 2 Vinari awards: Vinari d’Or, in the category of young red wines, with the wine Black 2020, 100% Grenache, and Vinari de Plata, in the category of young white wines, with White 2020, 100% xarel·lo.

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