The Technical Director, the Family House & the Hand That Removes Rather Than Adds
Joan Rubio is not a winemaker who learned his craft in obscurity — he is a technical director who walked away from one of Spain's most prestigious Cava houses to return to the family farmhouse where he was born. For 15 years, Joan steered the ship at Recaredo, one of Catalonia's most celebrated Cava producers, where he introduced biodynamic farming and learned the machinery of excellence. But the call of Cal Tiques — the family home in Santa Margarida i els Monjos, whose name he carries like a birthright — was too strong to ignore. In 2015, together with his wife Àngels and their son Arnau, he left the gleaming cellars of Recaredo for the modest, functional winery that his grandfather built — an old part from the mid-19th century, a new part from 2015, and a philosophy that is as radical as it is simple: no press, no additives, no filtration, no clarification — only gravity, only free-run juice, only the essence of the grape. His wines are lively, mineral, and deeply honest — the quiet revolution of a man who had everything and chose to have less.
The Technical Director, the Philosophy Student & the Return to Cal Tiques
Joan Rubio was born next to the vineyards of the family home called Cal Tiques — a name that, in Catalan, means simply "the house of Tiques" — in the village of Santa Margarida i els Monjos, in the heart of the Alt Penedès. He was very close to his grandfather, who told him endless stories when he intuited, in a 14-year-old boy, an interest in viticulture that would shape the rest of his life. Although Joan would have liked to study philosophy, he studied oenology instead — a choice that would eventually allow him to philosophise through wine, but not in the way he expected. At the age of 25, he began working the family fields, selling the grapes to local wineries and large Cava producers, as his parents and grandparents had done before him.
It was the meeting with Ton Mata of the prestigious Recaredo winery — a house he had met during his studies in Tarragona — that changed his destiny. While supplying grapes to Recaredo, Ton decided to take him into the family business. Two years later, Joan became Technical Director of one of Catalonia's most celebrated Cava producers, a position he held for almost 15 years. It was during these years that he met Pierre Masson, the pope of biodynamic viticulture, during a conference on the benefits of more responsible agriculture. Joan was captivated — at last, a vision of agriculture that emphasised the "living" and the balance between soil, plants, vines, and fauna. On his return, he set about converting the entire 50 hectares of Recaredo to biodynamic farming — a challenge equal to his ambitions, and one that would earn him a reputation as one of the most progressive technical directors in Spanish sparkling wine.
But as pleasant and comfortable as his position was, Joan had a deeper design. He wanted to stop selling grapes and start making wines from his own family's vineyards. He wanted to work with his wife Àngels, to involve his son Arnau, and to return to the house where he was born. And so, in 2015, with the help of a friend, Aart Jan Hemmink, Joan made the leap. Tiques Vins was born — not in a gleaming new facility, but in a small, functional winery that combines an old part from the middle of the 19th century with a recent part built in 2015. It is a space that smells of history and ambition, of grandfather's stories and a new beginning.
What emerged from this return was a project of extraordinary clarity. Joan did not bring the industrial scale of Recaredo to Cal Tiques; he brought the discipline. He did not bring the Cava methodology; he brought the biodynamic sensitivity. And he added something that no large house could offer: the courage to do less. At Cal Tiques, there is no press — not a foot press, not a machine press, not even a basket press. The wines are obtained exclusively by gravity decantation, using only free-run juice. There are no selected yeasts, no enzymes, no sulfites, no clarifications, no filtrations. The result is wine that is clean, healthy, and strong — wine that does not need artificial preservation because it has been preserved by the integrity of its fruit from the very beginning. As Joan writes: "Wine that is clean, healthy and strong does not need artificial preservation additives!"
Alt Penedès, the Calcareous Clay & the Three Municipalities
The estate of Cal Tiques spans approximately 8 to 10 hectares across three municipalities — Santa Margarida i els Monjos, Castellví de la Marca, and Vilafranca del Penedès — the historic triangle of the Alt Penedès that has defined Catalan wine for centuries. Three hectares are planted with cereals and olive trees; the remaining five are devoted to vineyards. For Joan and Àngels, this land is not merely a production base; it is a family archive — a landscape that holds the stories of his grandfather, the labour of his parents, and the future of his son. Every parcel has been chosen for its particular location, its climate, the grape variety, the age of the vines, and the soil type — and each is treated as an individual, their approach adjusting to its needs and potential.
The soils are predominantly deep calcareous clay — a very calcareous limestone clay with a great diversity of compositions that provides both structure and sustenance. The clay retains moisture during the long, dry Catalan summers, acting as a natural reservoir that sustains the vines through periods of drought. The limestone provides drainage, minerals, and a subtle, chalky minerality that threads through the wines like a vein of silver. Together, they create a soil that is poor in organic matter but rich in potential — forcing vine roots to dig deep in search of water and nutrients, and creating grapes of concentrated flavour and firm acidity. For Xarel·lo — the backbone of the estate — these soils are ideal, highlighting the variety's natural citrus precision, white flower aromatics, and almond-brittle texture.
The farming is organic and biodynamic — certified by the CCPAE since 2009 and guided by biodynamic principles that Joan adopted after his encounter with Pierre Masson. There is minimum intervention in the soil: no artificial fertilisers, no herbicides, no fungicides. Instead, Joan uses natural home-made compost and allows a variety of spontaneous plant covers to grow between the vines — a symbiosis of flora and fauna that creates a balanced, healthy soil that regenerates itself. He applies phytotherapy to the plants, working with horsetail and nettle decoctions that he harvests and dries himself. Pheromones are used for the sexual confusion of the lobesia moth. The goal is not merely to grow grapes, but to create a living agriculture — one that balances the ecosystem and provides yields for the long term rather than focusing on short-term extraction.
The backbone of Joan's wine — the element he guards above all others — is acidity. Much of his effort in the vineyard is aimed at finding the right leaf-to-fruit ratio to obtain the acidity that each wine needs. He believes that one can feel how the wines start their process in the vineyard and when they are ready to be guided. Pruning, for Joan, is not merely a technical task; it is a posture of reverence — a humanisation of the wild bud that will become the vine. By pruning, he asks the vine to fructify, and at that moment he decides what kind of wine he wishes to make. It is a conversation, not a command — and it is this sensitivity that distinguishes Cal Tiques from the industrial vineyards that surround it.
Santa Margarida i els Monjos is the municipality where Cal Tiques is located — a village in the Alt Penedès surrounded by vineyards and a mountain landscape. It is here, in the shadow of the pre-coastal range, that Joan was born, where his grandfather told him stories of the vine, and where the winery now stands. The village is not a tourist destination; it is a working agricultural community, a place where the rhythm of life is set by the harvest calendar and where people still know the names of their neighbours' vines. For Joan, Santa Margarida i els Monjos is the centre of the universe — the place where the old 19th-century cellar meets the new 2015 extension, and where every bottle begins its journey from grape to glass.
The Cal Tiques vineyards extend beyond Santa Margarida i els Monjos into the neighbouring municipalities of Castellví de la Marca and Vilafranca del Penedès — two of the most historically significant wine towns in Catalonia. Vilafranca, in particular, is the capital of the Penedès wine region, a town whose identity is inseparable from the vine. The soils here share the same calcareous clay character, but each parcel offers a slightly different face of the terroir — some cooler, some warmer, some with more limestone, some with more clay. This diversity allows Joan to craft wines of varying character from the same fundamental soil, creating a portfolio that is as nuanced as the landscape itself. The Ull de Llebre vineyard, for example, is located in Vilafranca — a plot of 0.85 hectares that produces the estate's only red.
The soils of Cal Tiques are very deep calcareous clay — a combination that is the signature of the best Penedès vineyards. The clay provides water retention, sustaining the vines through the hot, dry Mediterranean summers when rainfall is scarce. The limestone provides drainage, structure, and a distinct mineral character that expresses itself in the wine as a subtle chalkiness, a firm backbone of acidity, and a clean, precise finish. For Xarel·lo, these soils are ideal — the variety's natural generosity is balanced by the freshness and structure that the calcareous clay provides. For Macabeu, the soils highlight the grape's floral aromatics and gentle acidity. And for Ull de Llebre, the limestone adds a mineral tension that prevents the wine from becoming heavy or overripe. The result is a portfolio of wines that are fresh, vibrant, and unmistakably Penedès.
Joan's farming philosophy is rooted in the biodynamic principles he learned from Pierre Masson and applied first at Recaredo and now at Cal Tiques. The vineyards are certified organic by the CCPAE and farmed biodynamically since 2009 — a methodology that treats the vineyard as a living organism rather than a factory. Synthetic chemicals, herbicides, and artificial fertilisers are banned. Instead, Joan uses natural home-made compost, spontaneous cover crops, and phytotherapy with horsetail and nettle decoctions harvested and dried by hand. The goal is to create a soil that regenerates itself — a balanced ecosystem where flora and fauna coexist in symbiosis. For Joan, this is not a certification checkbox but a way of life — the only way he knows how to work, because it is the only way that respects the land his grandfather taught him to love.
No Press, Gravity Only & the Vessel That Breathes
The winemaking philosophy of Cal Tiques is distilled into a single principle: "It is a matter of removing rather than adding when trying to find the true nature of a wine and discover its elegance and subtleties." It is not a technique; it is a method of subtraction — a methodology born from Joan's conviction that the best thing a winemaker can do is get out of the way. At Cal Tiques, this subtraction is taken to its logical extreme: there is no press. Not a foot press, not a machine press, not a basket press. The winery does not own one, does not rent one, does not believe in one. Every drop of wine is obtained by gravity decantation — free-run juice only, devatted by délestage without pressing, allowing the liquid to separate from the solids by the simple, ancient force of gravity.
The process begins in the vineyard, where the grapes are hand-harvested into 20kg crates and transported to the cellar completely uncrushed. Upon arrival, they undergo a second selection on the sorting table — leaves and imperfect berries discarded, only the healthiest fruit passing through. The grapes are then destemmed and guided to stainless steel vessels, where maceration begins. Joan believes that the skin of the grape is a fundamental element in winemaking — it contains a large part of the flavours and aromas and influences the tactile feel of the wines. That is why all the wines at Cal Tiques are macerated on their skins for as long as needed — from five days to two weeks, depending on the type of wine and the characteristics of the vintage.
When the time comes to run off the wine, Joan does not press. He tastes the must daily, and when the fermentation has reached the point he desires, he simply opens the valve and lets gravity do the rest. The free-run juice flows into a carefully chosen arsenal of neutral vessels: stainless steel tanks, 4- to 5-year-old French oak demi-muids, and tinajas — ceramic amphorae of both red and white clay. Each vessel adds something different — breath, texture, silence — but none of them add flavour. The oak is never new. The toast is never pronounced. The ceramic amphorae — red clay and white clay, baked differently and made from different types of soil — offer micro-oxidation without oak influence, rounding out the wine's texture while preserving the purity of the fruit. Joan pays particular attention to the proper ageing times in each vessel, as well as the ageing period in the bottle, before release.
The Tiques cuvée — the flagship — is 100% Xarel·lo from a 0.5-hectare plot located directly in front of the house. The grapes are macerated on their skins for around seven days, then devatted by gravity and aged in red clay amphorae for approximately four months. The result is a wine of extraordinary cleanliness and mineral clarity — hints of fennel and lemon, bright elegance, and a texture that speaks of the amphora's gentle breath. The MAM is a blend of Xarel·lo, Macabeu, Malvasía, and Sumoll Blanc — a white wine of complex aromatics and surprising depth. The Joanots is 100% Macabeu, a wine of floral purity and Mediterranean charm. And the Ull de Llebre — 100% Tempranillo from a 0.85-hectare biodynamic vineyard in Vilafranca — is destemmed, macerated for five to seven days in stainless steel, and aged without oak, producing a light, easy-drinking red that defies the heavy, extracted stereotype of Spanish Tempranillo. What unites them all is the Cal Tiques signature: clean, mineral, lively, and deeply honest — wines that go straight to the essence.
Zero Additives, Gravity Only & the Covenant of the Free-Run Drop
The guiding principle of Cal Tiques is not what is added but what is refused. No selected yeasts. No enzymes. No sulfites. No clarifying agents. No filtration. No press. The indigenous yeasts carry the microbial fingerprint of the vineyard. The hand-harvesting and second sorting preserve the integrity of the fruit. The gravity decantation ensures that only the gentlest, most expressive juice makes it to the vessel. And the absence of additives means that every wine is a pure, unmediated expression of grape, place, and vintage — preserved not by chemistry but by the intrinsic quality and strength of the grapes themselves. As Joan believes: "Wine that is clean, healthy and strong does not need artificial preservation additives!" For Joan and Àngels, this is not dogma but the only way they know how to work: with reverence, with subtraction, with the stubborn conviction that the best wines are made by those who have the courage to do less — one harvest, one gravity decantation, one honest bottle at a time.
Tiques, MAM, Joanots & the Gravity Hand
The Cal Tiques portfolio is a reflection of a technical director's discipline and a philosopher's restraint — a collection of cuvées that span white, red, and orange-tinged skin-contact, made from organically and biodynamically farmed vines on deep calcareous clay soils, all united by gravity decantation without pressing, indigenous yeast fermentation, no additives, no filtration, no clarification, and a philosophy of radical subtraction that privileges the voice of the grape over the hand of the winemaker. Joan and Àngels' wines are not dressed up — they are clean, mineral, and deeply expressive, made by a man who spent 15 years mastering the machinery of Cava and then chose to leave it all behind for a cellar with no press. Production is small and highly allocated — the flagship Tiques cuvée amounts to roughly 1,450 bottles per year, the MAM to around 1,089. The wines are distributed through specialist natural wine importers and shops across Europe and beyond, each label designed by a friend of the couple to tell a story.
The Technical Director, the Return & the Essence of Cal Tiques
Cal Tiques is not merely a winery; it is a manifesto written in subtraction and gravity — a project that has redefined what it means to make wine in one of Catalonia's most commercially pressured regions by refusing to press, refusing to add, and refusing to scale. In an era when the wine industry is obsessed with extraction, oak, and global distribution, Joan Rubio and Àngels have demonstrated that the most profound wines sometimes come from a man who spent 15 years as Technical Director at a prestigious Cava house and then chose to make fewer than 1,500 bottles of Xarel·lo in a cellar with no press. They have proven that Xarel·lo — often reduced to the anonymous base of industrial Cava — can be a wine of luminous clarity and calcareous depth when farmed biodynamically, macerated on its skins, and aged in red clay amphorae. That a blend of Xarel·lo, Macabeu, Malvasía, and Sumoll Blanc can be a wine of complex aromatics and surprising depth when made without additives and without force. That Macabeu — the workhorse of Catalan sparkling wine — can be a wine of floral purity and Mediterranean charm when treated with reverence. And that Tempranillo — known worldwide for heavy extraction and new oak — can be light, fresh, and deeply drinkable when devatted by gravity and aged in stainless steel.
The legacy of Cal Tiques is the legacy of the man who had everything and chose to have less. Joan did not come to natural wine through poverty or outsider status; he came through excess — the excess of 15 years in the Cava industry, the excess of technical knowledge, the excess of machinery and method. His choice to leave Recaredo, to return to the family house, and to work with his wife and son is not a marketing strategy — it is an act of return, a homecoming to the place where his grandfather told him stories and where he first fell in love with the vine. The absence of a press is not merely a production method; it is a philosophy — the recognition that force destroys subtlety, and that the best juice is the juice that flows freely, without coercion. The gravity decantation is not merely a technique; it is a metaphor — for patience, for trust, for the belief that nature, left to itself, will provide what is needed.
The future of the project is tied to the future of natural wine as an act of technical humility — to the growing recognition that the greatest wines are not always made by those who add the most, but by those who remove the most: the presses, the additives, the filters, the clarifications, the ego. As the Tiques continues to prove that Xarel·lo can be luminous and pure, as the MAM demonstrates that natural white blends can be both complex and honest, as the Joanots captures the floral soul of Macabeu, and as the Ull de Llebre pushes the boundaries of what Spanish Tempranillo can be, Joan and Àngels remain what they have always intended to be: a technical director who became a philosopher-farmer, a husband and wife who returned to the family house, a father and mother who taught their son that wine is made in the vineyard and preserved by gravity — always without additives, always without a press, always true — one harvest, one free-run drop, one honest bottle at a time.
"I want to create wines that go straight to the essence, not dressing them up. It's a matter of removing rather than adding when trying to find the true nature of a wine and discover its elegance and subtleties."
— Joan Rubio, Cal Tiques, Santa Margarida i els Monjos, Alt Penedès