Sistema Vinari - Novetat Total 2023
We drink (and hear) a bottle of Novetat Total 2023 from Sistema Vinari in Mallorca.
Wines that I can hear are rather rare. But this wine makes noises, at least in my head. Somewhere in the attic, there’s a box of CDs that look deceptively similar to what’s stuck on the front of this bottle. CDs, for the younger ones, are what you used to insert into dedicated drives to listen to music. In the brief period when vinyl records were no longer cool, cassettes (don’t even ask) were outdated, and streaming was not yet available. Nowadays, at least records are back in style. But I digress. Anyway, I still occasionally enjoy a proper dose of double bass storms and guitar riffs while someone screams something into the microphone. And meanwhile, the streaming service of my choice now displays unreadable text with lots of black and a few dark figures on my phone. Almost like back then. And when this bottle crossed my path somewhere else on the internet, I had to have it. I’m pretty simple-minded like that, but what can you do. The wine is called Novetat Total, and if you try really hard, you can actually read it, if you know what it says. It’s made by Eloi Cedó Perelló in Mallorca, who started making wine on the island in 2012 with Francesc Grimalt and Sergi Caballero, whom we know from 4kilos, after a bet. That was called Château Paquita, which was quite well-known but no longer exists. I must admit that I had never heard the name until just now, but the wine world is big, and we haven’t been around in it for that long either. He has since moved to the north of Mallorca and makes his wines in the cellar of his friend Cati Ribot. Novetat Total is a blend of equal parts Callet and Manto Negro, bottled in a practical green one-liter bottle. Apparently, there’s not a lot of it, but I don’t know exactly how much in the current 2023 vintage.
For half a minute after uncorking, I’m not sure if there wasn’t beer in the bottle. There’s so much yeast aroma still in the wine, and remnants of fermentation carbon dioxide rise in fine bubbles. Natural and post-fermentation make me briefly worried, but it dissipates. The white balance on the title picture was probably overwhelmed because the ochre tone that made it into the picture doesn’t exist like that in the real world. On the contrary, it’s a slightly cloudy but very fresh red. A bit like raspberry jam. You can also smell red berries and an almost borderline aggressive acidity for me, which becomes fruitier with swirling. Is it supposed to be like that? No idea. It’s definitely tasty. We move the wine to the fridge to cool it down from room temperature to the recommended 10 degrees I read about somewhere.
Indeed, the yeast note completely disappears, and the bubbles quickly dissipate. Now it smells like raspberries, blueberries, and cherries, some blood orange, and a bit of dirt and bacon. The acidity remains, maybe a bit less lightsaber-like. The better half doesn’t mind that at all but she also drinks kombucha forgotten for months. I’m already looking for something against the heartburn. I really like the tannin though. It has just the right dose of scratchiness and structure. And somehow it also reminds me of the herbs in an Almdudler. Without drinking it, I’m a big fan, my nose just stays stuck in the glass. But how it then cuts through my palate, that’s too intense for me.
Surprisingly, it stays exactly the same for the second evening. Given our first moments together, I would have bet either the wine would completely fade or become super wild. How wrong you can be. There’s still the dirty berry fruit, the herbs, the structure, and a bit of cola. And to completely dispel my prejudices, even the acidity has calmed down. At least a bit. Enough that even I can take big sips without fear of nighttime heartburn. Big sips are easily possible thanks to the liter bottle. When I look deep into my eyes, I know I won’t buy this wine again. Aside from whether that would even be possible. But I had fun with the bottle. Sure, also because I just like how it looks and where this label opens drawers in my memory or CD cases. Context is important here, and blind, it would be a different wine. I don’t mind that because I can tick off a wine on the internal to-drink list, the cupboard has one more bottle, and we had fun with it. And that’s why we do this in the first place.