Beautiful bright garnet in colour, with cacao highlights. Complex and elegant on the nose, with ripe black fruits, truffle, cacao, soft spices, vanilla, cherry and smoky notes. A lot of finesse and complexity on the palate, with aromas of ripe black and red fruits, spices, truffle, cacao, and lead. Long and salivating finish with elegance and finesse. The tannins are silky and melted.

Serve at 18ºC. Decant 30 minute to 2 hours for optimal appreciation. A wine for big occasions. It goes well with veal and beef, roasted or grilled. It's also excellent with spicy game dishes and old aged cheese. Co-founder Martin is happy to enjoy this one as it comes, to fully savour it.

We spent a day with owner and winemaker Marc Bournazeau (and a number of his cats and dogs!). He is stylish and design oriented - which is evident as soon as you see the winery that he constructed with his wife, with the help of leading Spanish architect and friend of the family Pepe Cortés.

Marc takes great pride in his work and his land. In terms of his wine-making philosophy, here's how he explains it:

"The vineyards are grouped around the winery, which houses the equipment for making the different wines. This means that the harvested grapes can be brought in very quickly. The main criteria governing the winery’s organisation can be resumed in three concepts: quality, respect for the raw materials and identity.

Obtaining wines of high quality is our primary objective. It is for this reason that the owners try to isolate grapes of quality as far as possible during the entire process, from the vine to the ageing of the wines.

Moreover, we believe that the greater the quality of the raw material, the lower the need for intervention at the level of the winemaking and ageing process. We try to reduce to a minimum any interventions that may harm the grapes, in order to respect the original quality of the fruit.

In short, our philosophy is to bring personalised service into the making of each of our wines. Given that the factors playing a role in the development of a wine are numerous (grape type, soil, climate, fermentation time, ageing, etc.), we conceive the winemaking for each wine as a unique process that cannot be systematically repeated. In short, in view of the complexity of the respective viticultural and oenological tasks, we work on “individualism” in each phase of wine production, taking into account the unique specifications of each one of our wines."

We would summarise Marc as an experimental perfectionist (with a very accommodating wife who keeps asking him to reduce not expand the line-up!). And Marc is charming too. We look forward to visiting him and his family again soon, and to their next visit to London.

The Terra Remota winery was founded in 1999, when the Bournazeau Florensa family acquired 15 hectares of virgin land occupied by oaks, cork oak, pine. This has now evolved into a property covering 54 hectares, half of which are used for growing vines, located in the far northeast of the Iberian Peninsula, in the Alt Empordà region, in Girona province, and falling within the DO Empordà.

Situated on the outskirts of the villages of Capmany and Sant Climent Sescebes, at the heart of a forested area, the estate is protected from the northern tramuntana wind by the Albera Massif. It lies some 15 km from the Mediterranean sea, at a height of 140 metres above sea level and has soils that are markedly granitic in nature. This is a solitary, captivating spot that appears to be far removed from the rest of the world, and this explains the name that Terra Remota has given to its project.

Paradoxically, despite the remoteness of the location, this area has been occupied by human communities since ancient times. Thus, remains of settlements belonging to the Iberian culture have been documented in the region, which goes to prove the long history of the human presence in this territory. In recognition of this, for its logo, Terra Remota has used two symbols attributed to these ancient communities, engraved on blocks of granite.

From its birth, the Terra Remota winery has displayed a marked sensitivity towards the territory on which it stands, and coherence in the way it is integrated into the surrounding natural landscape. All this constitutes the backbone of Terra Remota’s philosophy and influences its actions in every sense.

Moving on Up (2*).

Terra Remota (which is partnered with the Adalta vineyard) is a visionary winery project. Winemaker and owners Marc and Emma have created something special in the granitic soils of the Pyrannean foothills, with beautifully designed architecture of the winery, built sympathetically into the landscape. The vineyard has organic certification since 2012 and organic practice over its initial 15 hectares since inception, while the Adalta plots are undergoing organic conversion now. Marc uses gravity throughout the winery, and rainwater harvesting from the winery roof which covers the additional watering required in the hot summers of Girona.

Red | Still | 75cl | 12.5% ABV | Contains Sulphites

Annual Production: 3,000 bottles

Awards: Usted 2008: Jancis Robinson 16.5 • Usted 2009: Gourmets 96/100 • Usted 2009: Grenaches du Monde: Silver

Cellaring: Ready to drink now. Will develop over the coming 10 years and more.

Vinification: Plot vinification. Sorting and destemming of grapes, vatting by gravity, extraction by daily punching down, alcoholic fermentation at controlled temperature (20-22°C), maceration for 6 weeks, ageing for 36 months in French oak barrels, blended at the end of ageing. No fining or filtration before bottling.

Small quantity - on allocation.

Vineyard last visited by Wine&Earth's co-founders Martin & Toby in Autumn 2021

• Organic - Independently Certified
• Vegan - Practising (Uncertified)