Cop de Ma Tinta 2013

From Salvador Dalí's home territory comes this remarkably vibrant young red, with an awful lot going on. A youthful clarity on the eye prepares us for red fruit aromas that come out of the glass at us quicker than a man dressed as a nun riding a bicycle, cherry and raspberry flavours race round the palate like ants from a hole in the palm, and a fresh fruit finish lingers as if it were a grand piano with a dead donkey on it. Picking the bottle back up from we left it, draped over a tree, we wonder what just came over us. The wine's lovely, whatever all that other stuff was about. How odd! Anyway, better go and answer the lobster...

Cop de Ma comes from Vitis Catalonia, an aggregation of wine-growers pooling their oenological resources into a range of fantastic value wines from across the whole area. Vitis Catalonia, in turn, is part of the Cisa Group, an international organisation committed to ethical trading which encourages its members to comply with Business Social Compliance Initiative standards, as well as to take environmental and organic issues into account. The name Cop de Ma translates as ‘lend a hand’ – and the labels make reference to the Castells of so many Catalan celebrations, human pyramids that symbolise the region's spirit of co-operation.

Catalunya, in the northeast of Spain, epitomises much that we find exciting about Spain. Wine, art, food and general good living ooze from every pore of the place. Salvador Dali hailed from Figueres; the capital, Barcelona, is a massive international cultural nexus; and there is wine everywhere! Approximately 200 bodegas produce a total of 38 million litres of wine annually, much of it in the form of vibrant young wines from Tarragona, but most famously the sparkling Cava wine that hails from the Penedès region.

The grapes are picked from vines ranging from five to 20 years old, grown on calcerous clay soil. After destemming and crushing, a 15 day fermentation takes place in stainless steel tanks, 10 of those days in contact with the skins.