Vallformosa, known for its high quality cava wines, has launched its latest expression ‘Cultivare wines’ with links that connect the release to art, nature and our global collective experiences of the past year.
The launch, which has become an artistic and expressionist response to the effects felt by the global pandemic, aims to represent our worldwide shared experience of how isolation has led us all on the path to truly value people, interaction, activity and tactile closeness.
Each bottling and its packaging has been created in the natural environment and has become a nod to the Cultivare’s close ongoing relationship with culture, art, nature and empathy. Artistically, the labels depict a hole that is now full to represent the silence and emptiness that the world endured before it could move forwards and find fulfilling ways to connect with others.
“Cultivare is the passion for viticulture and the territory that has become art. Since its origins, Cultivare has had a very direct relationship with culture and nature. For this reason, the labels of our wines are designed and made in a natural environment surrounded by Land Art: with a performance that ensures each one of them tells a special story,” said Vallformosa’s chief executive officer Marta Vidal.
“This past year, culture has been silenced and we have been distanced from nature, which has created a gap in our lives. A gap that is collective, because we have experienced it worldwide,” Vidal added.
“It is precisely this emptiness, the result of a year of silence that has changed us all, that has inspired the new Cultivare labels and has allowed us to create art without ink and to work on creativity from the element it best represents: a hole. A hole that is now full and a silence that now sounds,” said Vidal.
Vallformosa has described this year’s labels for the range as having been inspired by what the company has gleaned from the world’s responses to the pandemic. “We have learned to meet, celebrate and feel close despite the distance: digitally,” said Vidal, pointing out that “the holes in the labels are a metaphor for the pause and, at the same time, a score that hides a melody composed by all of you.”
Within the line-up, Cultivare Blanco is made with the Xarel·lo grape, a variety that grows at 286 metres above sea level and gives the wine its clean pale yellow colour. On the nose, the wine has “ripe aromas of sweet fruit, syrups and light toast of the cask” and has been described as “a white wine that evolves spectacularly in the bottle” and is “powerful and creamy but without foregoing the original freshness and acidity of a variety deeply rooted in the Penedès region”.
Cultivare Tinto, made with the Sumoll grape, is a “medium-intensity deep red colour” and “mixes the fresh aromas of Sumoll’s citrus and red fruit with the ripeness of black fruit and peat”. The resulting wine has the “dominant freshness and acidity of Sumoll and, on the other, the marked stamp of the Samsó grape. So much so that this wine is presented as vibrant, rustic and with a personality of its own”.
Each of the Cultivare wines have been crafted by the winemaker Xavi Pons. Previous editions include 2016’s dance, music and painting inspired release where, on a canvas of more than 5,000 labels, two dancers reenacted the cycle of the vineyard through a contemporary dance choreography and musical composition written for the occasion and the 2018 Land Art release where in the middle of the vineyard, a “natural machine” used 100 vine branches acted as a brush to paint each of the labels to the rhythm of the wind. 
“Since Cultivare is inspired by Culture (as its own name shows) and nature, we felt that it was our duty to pay homage to those who spent a lot of days at home unable to enjoy the nature and the culture,” said Vidal reminding that “the culture was silenced and we were distanced from nature, which created a gap in our lives.”
“We wanted to gather around as many people as possible and make them participate in the creation of the new Cultivare,” Vidal explained, highlighting how “as result of being isolated in our homes, we decided to do it in a digital way, opening the project to the whole world,”
“A year of silence that has changed us all, in a way, we have learned to meet, celebrate and feel close despite the distance: digitally, through a survey. Those surveys had five questions with three possible answers in each one. Based on the answers, an algorithm created a pattern that was the design of each label,” said Vidal, explaining that in response the company “created a machine that drilled every pattern on the label and the result was what we have right now. Thousands of different labels inspired by our people. And whatsmore, it turns out that the pattern is also a melody, every hole is a chord.”
Vallformosa went further and built another machine – this time both a music box and a label piercing contraption – capable of reading the notes to create a melody, a feat for any company and yet perhaps not one for this historical example of both determination and inventiveness. Vallformosa is a winery with more than 150 years of history. A history that is deeply rooted in the Penedès wine region, a small paradise on the outskirts of Barcelona that the winery is committed to preserve. Vallformosa is deeply rooted in the Penedès wine region and only works with local winegrowers who have been working with the winery for decades.
“This means that all our grapes come from the territory and we can ensure their complete traceability. That been said, Cultivare white is a 100% Xarel·lo wine, while Cultivare red is the combination of Sumoll and Samsó varieties. Xarel·lo grapes are widely planted in our region. It is a variety valued for the acid structure it brings to wines and its juice offers an excellent balance,” said Vidal, adding: “After three fermentations in a steel tank, an egg-shape cement and finally an open barrel, we get Cultivare white with a perfect structure and balance, acidity and a very long finish that gives it a great personality.”
Cultivare red is pressed and aged for a year in closed French barrels with different levels of toasted. The Samsó grapes provide powerful aromas with a very fresh acidity and an excellent balance, while Sumoll grapes, a Mediterranean variety almost extinct today, give it its unique character.
“We work the land with respect, finding more sustainable ways to produce our wines, but also to take care of our people. We work closely with more than 500 families of winegrowers from this region. This ensures the complete traceability of the most we produce and guarantees its quality,” said Vidal.
Indeed, with Cultivare wines, one of the winery’s most awarded and premium wines, Vallformosa carefully selects the grapes that it harvests manually when they are at their optimal ripening point. “This takes more time and care but the result is worth the effort,” explained Vidal, but reminded: “Cultivare is the result of craftsmanship, it is an art, a culture of love for winemaking. It breathes respect for the land, the vineyards and the region that is our raison d’être.”
Cultivare is available on-line at the official VFMS site and at premium wine shops in a number of countries worldwide.
