Cati Ribot, "Son Llebre Negre" 2019

30 miles northeast from Palma, just upland from Alcúdia Bay, in the town of Santa Margalida amidst some of the flattest farmland in Mallorca, (which makes the local markets prime for the best produce on the island) there is Cati Ribot. Cati has been making wine for over 15 years in the flatlands around Santa Margalida and is a third-generation winegrower herself; she is among only three natural wineries on the island and is the only female winegrower in all of Mallorca. She is also a single mother – intrepid and herculean do not begin to describe this aspect of the ‘terroir’ (as in her, as a person) in her wines. Since 2015, she’s converted her 13.5 hectares (!) to biodynamics, and started to find new markets for her distinctly Mallorcan wines which she’s devotedly and lovingly committed to expressions of local, nearly extinct Mallorcan grape varieties like Manto Negro, Giró Ros, Escursac, Fogoneu, Callet, and Prensal Blanc. Wines that testify to the kneeling waves and muscular winds, yes, but maybe more so to Borges’s formulation: ‘lejos / lejos.’ They are natural wines that broaden and breathe and encompass something close to a horizon in the distance / the distance.

A blend of Escursac, Callet and Callet Negrella grown on Cal Vermell, the local iron-rich clay-calcareous soils, close to the ocean. Grapes are hand-harvested and fermented whole cluster in both steel vat and amphora  for 30-40 days. The wine is aged in barrel for 4 months and then a further 2 months in steel, before being bottled unfined, unfiltered with no SO2.