Blanc Sense Papers 2024

It was in the heart of Penedès, the Spanish wine region famous for its bubbly Cavas, more specifically in Sant Martí Sarroca, that Ferrán Lacruz was born to a very humble farming family. When it was time to go to college, the young man chose to get a degree in Tourism, mainly because he was eager to learn foreign languages, since he was convinced that languages would help him to face the uncertainty of the future. In order to graduate he had to do an internship in a wine cellar, which consisted in presenting and explaining the techniques of production of wines to foreign visitors, but it was at that time that he thought the ideal would be for him to make his own wines, instead of weaving explanations around wines made by someone else. Thus, as soon as he got his degree he started an Enology degree program.

While studying the many aspects related to wine, and in addition to all the scientific knowledge he acquired, Ferrán started to systematize a series of personal ideas about how to produce wine, and in particular he thought about what should a specific wine communicate to those who taste it. As a consequence, in the last stages of the enology program he managed to convince some old farmers to let him work their vineyards, located in the proximity to his home village. As expected, only a small number of farmers sailed through skepticism and let themselves be seduced by the explanations and work methods contrived by the young idealist.

Ferrán received his degree in Enology on a Friday in 2018, and the following Monday he was already working, kicking off an atypical experience for the region, almost in clandestinity, and in this wise Bodega Clandestina came into existence. His goal is to make a unique kind of wine, i.e., a wine that is true to the land where the vines grow, a clean wine, though without faults, since a wine with flaws, no matter what they are, disrespects the region where it was made. Ferrán is well aware that the knowledge obtained in the enology program makes a lot of sense – for instance, he is always on the lookout for wines with low pH, since this gives them a better microbial protection –,  but he also affirms, with an admirable simplicity, that “I went to college to learn, now I work to unlearn.” All his wines are bottled unfined, unfiltered, and with zero addition of sulfur.