Everybody loves sparkling wines, most of all Champagne. For years, people only stepped out of the Champagne box to avoid spending Champagne prices. But Recaredo offers an even better excuse: deliciousness and distinctiveness.

Catalonia has made many great contributions to world culture (Gaudí, Dalí), but has any added as much to human happiness as Cava? If you've been to Barcelona's Cava bars, you have experienced this first hand. Everybody is smiling, everyone is joyful. While Prosecco may be perfect for a spritz on a piazza, Cava is a go-to for just having fun.

But Recaredo, and a handful of other producers, think that Cava can be much more than just fun. They love fun as much as anyone (and the wines are fun!), but they also want to make a world-class bubbly that doesn't have to hide its face in shame whenever a bottle of Champagne enters the room.

So they do everything right. They grow mostly just indigenous varieties; they aren't trying to imitate Champagne, but to rival it. They work organically and without dosage. They label all their wines with vintages. They riddle the bottles and disgorge them by hand. They release the bottles many years after the vintage.

Just how high is the quality, really? Consider the story of Neal Rosenthal, importer of exceptionally fine and classical wines, almost all of which come from France or Italy. One of the few exceptions—and the only wine he imports from Spain—is Recaredo. He told us once that he imports it not to make money but because he loves to drink the wine and his fridge at home is filled with bottles!

Professional Reviews

What importer Rosenthal Wine Merchant has to say about this wine...

Recaredo’s uncompromisingly vinous, deeply colored sparkling rosé is produced from fully ripe Monastrell and Garnacha, pressed slowly and given six hours of skin-maceration, and given five years of lees aging. Bright, sappy, and bursting with salt-flecked fruit, this wine simultaneously expresses the verve of the vintage and the solar imprint of the terroir. If most still rosé from the French stretch of the sea straitjackets itself with overcropping, sulfur, and a rush to bottling (that salmon color so beloved by the market requires some coercion), “Intens” expresses the full luscious heat of the Mediterranean in typically Recaredo-esque visceral fashion, yet it remains scintillatingly vibrant and refreshing to drink.