Meet Recerca | Jess Albero & Laurent Pujol
We first met Jess and Laurent at a Salon in France back in 2022 when they were sharing their newly released 2021s. The wines were vibrant and lifted and we were really excited about them as warm and fun individuals as much as their wines.
Jess and her late husband Chris were bitten by the wine bug in the late 2000s in Paris and eventually opened Les Indigenes in Perpignan in 2009. There they also met the native ‘catalan’ Laurent who had been working in the vines from early on.
In 2015 they started collaborating on various négoce projects involving the fruit of the likes of Tom Lubbe of Matassa and others exploring the depth and variety of the South of France. Eventually, after Chris suddenly passed away, they slowly started to initiate making wines from their own vineyards and cellar and this eventually led them to ‘Recerca’.
Recerca is the local name for ‘research’ in Catalan (the cultural heritage of Catalans spans across many parts of France’s SW to this day) and so it felt like a mantra to their work then and to this day while their earlier projects ‘Zulu’ intended to have a more ad-hoc intention.
With their 2022s, we are excited to share a vintage that they describe as dry and hot as ever but with a welcome freshness across their different cuvées. The Voltor (a short maceration of Macabeu and Muscat) is a lightning bright sunshine wine filled with all the energy you’d hope from this part of the world while Duel (extended maceration of Muscat Alexandria and Petit Grain) as well as Version (a blend of white, gris and red grapes) shows the more serious and contemplative side to the schist and marnes soils found within the Côte Catalan.
