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You’ve earned a reputation as the leader of one of world’s top wineries. What do you think sets Pere Ventura Family Wine Estates apart?
I’ve seen many, many companies. Everybody today makes his own wine. Because it's easy to make wine. What’s not easy is to make a good wine. And it's not easy at all to make a wonderful wine, a wonderful sparkling wine.
But more than the wine, I’m passionate about our origins, our roots, the people that surround us, our families, the farmers who work very hard, from early morning until sundown. And I feel responsible for this community. That is why I decided to establish my own company so that I could create a truly wonderful wine.
I’m passionate about our origins, our roots, the people that surround us, our families, the farmers who work very hard, from early morning until sundown. And I feel responsible for this community
What are the keys to obtaining that quality?
To make a wonderful sparkling wine, you need to employ good practices. But that alone isn’t enough. It’s like, if you have a fish from the Atlantic and a fish from the Pacific, they’re not the same, even if it’s the same species. In other words, it’s important to choose just the right terroir, and when I opened my own business in 1991 my first job was to identify the nicest plots in our area. In the end, I concentrated on higher altitude plots.
Pere Ventura recently announced that it is sponsoring the “Top 5 Female Sommeliers” category for an annual ranking done by the online publication Sommelier Edit. Why is this important to you?
For me, women are the future. I believe in supporting them in order to push them to get ahead. I feel that women are loyal, and it’s important to honour them.
What is the key to selling and exporting your wine, to finding new customers?
I’m only looking for people who can share my point of view, my same philosophy, and not just about wine, but my passion for all that goes into it — the community, the people. I'm looking for customers who can understand this.
Where does this passion come from?
I believe you have to help people. I believe in traditional values, human values and principles. And through this you can build something. Something that can be offered to the next generation. Everybody needs to take responsibility for themselves to offer the next generation a better future.
Quality is the hallmark of all the wines produced by Pere Ventura Family Estates. That being said, there’s one particular sparkling wine than stands above the rest, the company’s crème de la crème, so to speak.
Pere Ventura’s Gran Vintage is a paraje calificado, the highest designation for Spanish sparkling wines, and only a handful of the country’s wineries have achieved this grade of cava.
For starters, the designation requires that the sparkling wine be aged for more than 36 months. In addition, the grapes must be harvested by hand, and from vines that are at least 10 years old. There are limits too on the maximum yield (8,000 kg/hectare) and maximum output (48 hectolitres/hectare).
In Pere Ventura’s case, the Gran Vintage is aged for 7-9 years and is made from grapes grown on century-old vines, in special soil conditions and a micro climate that sets this very special cava apart.
With just 3,000 bottles made per year, this sparkling wine, with its complex palate and careful acidity balance, is the jewel in the company’s crown. As Pere Ventura himself explains, Gran Vintage is truly the embodiment of what he has been trying to accomplish all these years.
