Nuria Renom the Phenom! - New wines from Catalunya

1/28/24 -

Nuria Renom is one of the most exciting and impassioned winemakers to recently emerge out of the dynamic natural wine scene in Catalunya, Spain. A whirlwind visit to the states last month left every single industry professional and wine enthusiast with a great impression of Nuria's capability to be an uplifting clown and a very serious and focused winemaker.

She is engaged, always ready for a joke and a laugh, but she also very clearly has great intent with the wines she crafts, the grapes she uses, and the role of different bottlings (some are for a party and others are more complex and layered). Her history in the natural wine scene most notably brings us back to her days as the maven of Bar Brutal, where she encaspulated and multplied the frenetic vibe at the iconic Barcelona wine bar, before turning her attention to making wine. It seems she has a natural ability for her new role, and one gets the sense that her time at Bar Brutal was simply a prelude to her true calling.

From her friendships with winemakers across Spain and in particular around Barcelona, she has been able to locate small vineyards and work with fruit from important parcels in the area. Though wines are not always a reflection of the person who crafts them, they certainly are in the case of Nuria Renom. Her sparkling wines are playful, exhilirating, and ready to party, just like her! Her top still wines are meditative and focused, and when you ask her about these wines and her intention with the cuvees and the parcels, she takes a much more stoic and philosophical air. It almost seems like a jest when she quiets down and becomes more serious, as if she's mocking an academic air, but it's real. She is very serious, in fact about all of her wines, she just understands that they have personalities and that some are not meant for contemplation while others are. To some degree, this can be divided between the Pet-Nats and the still wines, with the sparkling wines best suited for a party and a jovial moment, and the still wines having more nuance and complexity. That said, I was most impressed with the big bottle of 2021 Maca Beu Pet-Nat (available in Mag only!) because of the lovely texture and low alcohol and the obvious complexity of the wine, so it shouldn't be said that the Pet-Nats lack profondity. Today's offer marks the first time we have written about Nuria's wines and her project, and surely not the last. We present a fairly comprehensive lineup of her recent bottlings and encourage any fan of vibrant living wines with Mediterranean profiles to try them! -Eben Lillie

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