Toni Sarrión of Mustiguillo unveiled the new vintage of his successful Mestizaje Blanco wine together with Miguel Donat of Voravins at Mi Cub, the coolest place to enjoy the best wines of the Valencian Community in the Mercado de Colón. The 2023 vintage was a warm vintage, while the new Mestizaje Blanco vintage, thanks to last year’s rainfall, has turned out to be a cooler vintage, with more balance and roundness, better acidity, and lower alcohol content.

This creation, which comes from the Mustiguillo winery, at an altitude of 900 metres on the Finca Calvestra estate in Requena, with its own bush- and trellis-type vineyards cultivated in strictly dry farming on limestone soils with a sandy loam texture… evolves every year. That’s why the tasting, in which Sarrión reveals the changes between the old and new vintages, is so interesting. Year after year, Mestizaje Blanco progressively changes the blend, with a reduction in Viognier and an increase in Macabeo, and although the climatic conditions are usually very similar, on this occasion, the abundant rainfall has modified the result a little more.

Mestizaje is already a Mustiguillo classic that never ceases to surprise with each vintage, although they try to harvest earlier to maintain freshness. Their blend, as in previous vintages, is made of the Merseguera, Malvasía, Viognié, and Xarel.lo varieties to achieve a clear, bright, straw-yellow wine with great aromatic intensity, dominated by stone fruits. Even so, this time, they have reduced the amount of Xarel.lo and, as they explained, they reduce it in the blend each year because Viognié is more alcoholic. According to Sarrión, “everyone thinks it’s a formula, but it’s not. It’s a wine that we interpret each year and try to capture an improvement in the bottle, in addition to acclimatizing to climate change to achieve a wine that is fresher and better every day.”

Mestizaje is born with an urban, dynamic, and very sociable spirit. For Toni Sarrión, its profile is “voluptuous and aromatic, a vertical wine, more mineral, and it finds freshness and clearly expresses its Mediterranean character.”

Report by ‘24/7 Valencia’ team

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