The Architect & the Champagne

The story of Muchada-Léclapart begins not in a vineyard but in a doctoral thesis. Alejandro Muchada was a model student of architecture at the University of Seville, preparing his doctorate, with no particular interest in wine — to the point that he had hardly ever tried it. In 2011, his annual research trip to Morocco coincided with Ramadan, so he changed plans, grabbed his rucksack, and headed to France to work on organic farms. A friend asked if he wanted to join a harvest in Champagne with the relatives of another friend, called Clotilde Léclapart. He didn't think twice. The plan sounded great. As fate would have it, he landed at the door of David Léclapart — a renowned biodynamic Champagne producer in Trépail, on the Montagne de Reims — without even knowing who he was.

What Alejandro found was not merely a winery but a way of life. David's mother, Lucette, cooked wonders for everyone. David himself — described by Alejandro as "a 50-year-old boy who loves what he does and is super generous" — talked about biodynamics, the stars, the constellations, treating plants with plants. "It seemed to me like an opening to a new world, a very beautiful horizon to look up to," Alejandro remembers. "I was floating on air when I returned home." He came back for the 2012 harvest, and then again in 2014, 2015, 2016. The friendship deepened. In 2013, during a family holiday in Sanlúcar, it was David's turn to fall head over heels — with the light, the albariza soils, and the Atlantic landscape of Andalucía. He now even talks of retiring there.

Back in Sanlúcar, Alejandro began his viticultural education from the ground up. He joined the crews of labourers who work the land — "low-paid, precarious labour" — to learn pruning, desuckering, and the other farming tasks that define a vigneron's life. "I owe a lot to Juan Morales, my mentor in the vineyard," he says. "Few people are as capable as him when it comes to explaining how to prune." He was also one of the founders of Alba Viticultores, a small natural wine bodega in Sanlúcar, alongside Miguel Gómez, Fernando Angulo, and Carmen Caballero. After three years, the group split: Alba continued under Fernando and Carmen, while Miguel founded Mahara Viticultores. Alejandro was the only one without a background in wine, but he had fallen in love with the vineyard. With David's support and example, he decided to become a full-time grape grower and work the couple of small plots he had rented.

In 2016, after years of friendship, trial wines, and shared harvests, David and Alejandro decided to make it official. They founded Muchada-Léclapart, importing the vigneron model and biodynamic agriculture from Champagne to apply it to Palomino vines and albariza soils. They rented a small winery in Sanlúcar's Barrio Alto and began farming their first hectares. The goal was clear: to make great white wine from Sherry country — not Sherry, not fortified wine, not oxidative wine, but pure, dry, saline, mineral white wine that expresses the soul of Palomino and the albariza soils where it grows. It was a radical proposition in a region defined by flor, fortification, and tradition. But as Alejandro says: "At 20 tons per hectare, any wine is neutral. The key is to look for the best raw material, find its most delicate expression, and preserve that value."

The guiding philosophy of Muchada-Léclapart is expressed in a single, radical proposition: to make great white wine from Sherry country without fortification, without a flor veil, and without oxidative aging. In a region where Palomino has been treated for centuries as a blank canvas for biological and oxidative processes, Alejandro and David have chosen to treat it as a noble grape — one that, at low yields and with careful viticulture, can produce wines of crystalline purity, saline depth, and gastronomic complexity. Their approach is deliberately minimal: biodynamic farming, hand harvest, indigenous yeasts, no selected yeasts, no acid adjustments, no filtration, no clarification, and only 3g/hL of SO2 — 10% of what conventional producers use. Despite this non-interventionist approach, they refuse to call their wines "natural". "We don't like faulty, unclean wines or with high volatile acidity," they explain. "It's the same with David's champagnes; he doesn't refer to them as natural even though they have no sulfur or dosage added."

The methodology is simple but deeply considered. All grapes are hand-harvested between 6 and 10am into larger Champagne boxes and transported immediately to the winery. They are placed in a horizontal press — the same cycle used in Champagne — and pressed gently. The must is settled overnight, then fermented spontaneously with indigenous yeasts at room temperature. The winery is cooled with two air conditioning units rather than chilling the wines directly. They avoid stainless steel, believing it "ionizes wines and makes them restless," and instead ferment in ceramic-coated steel tanks or used Bordeaux barrels. The wines are kept on their lees until bottling, without racking or batonnage, to preserve texture and complexity. During pressing, only 3g/hL of SO2 is added — the sole intervention in an otherwise untouched process. The wines are neither filtered nor clarified.

The special cuvées are made with the same care and attention to plot. Univers comes from the youngest vines in La Platera Baja, fermented and aged in ceramic-coated steel for 7–9 months on lees — a wine of wonderful aromatics, spice, pear, and minerals. Lumière is the flagship: old-vine Palomino from the highest part of La Platera, aged 12–14 months in 400L Bordeaux barrels — full-bodied, fatty, complex, with refreshing acidity and evocations of chalk, wild herbs, and fallow straw. It has received 99 points for its crystalline minerality. Étoile comes from a plot called Pastrana in Miraflores, aged in old Manzanilla butts owned by Ignacio Partida, foreman at the legendary El Armijo vineyard — complex, taut, crystalline citrus with a touch of Oloroso raisin character. Elixir is a defiant dry Moscatel from Chipiona, blended with 45% Palomino — aromatic exuberance refined by salinity and persistence. And Vibrations is a highly original 5-day skin-contact Palomino from abandoned vines in Miraflores Alta, fermented and aged in an Amontillado bota — powerful, spicy, marmalade, and orange peel. Each cuvée is a distinct expression of a specific plot, a specific soil, and a specific moment in the ongoing conversation between Champagne and Andalucía.

The cellar is not a technological facility; it is a modest, rented space in Sanlúcar's Barrio Alto where ceramic-coated tanks sit alongside used Bordeaux barrels and old Manzanilla butts, where Alejandro does the day-to-day work and David travels from Champagne for harvest, bottling, and key decisions. There is no consultant recommending corrective enzymes, no recipe that overrides the vintage, no pressure to produce polished, sterile bottles. There is only the two men, the 4 hectares, the albariza, and the patience to let each plot take the time it needs. The result is a portfolio of wines that are honest, precise, and alive — wines that have earned a place on the wine lists of discerning restaurants and shops from Seville to New York. As one writer noted, these wines are miles away from the idea that most people have of wines from this part of the world — a direct line from Atlantic chalk to glass.

Muchada-Léclapart is not merely a winery; it is a radical reimagining of Sherry culture — a project that rejects both fortification and the flor veil that have defined the region for centuries, and instead treats Palomino as a noble grape capable of producing world-class still white wine. In an era when much of the Sherry Triangle has been dominated by industrial bodegas, declining consumption, and a crisis of identity, Alejandro and David represent something rare and vital: a bridge between the deepest traditions of Andalucian viticulture and the most forward-thinking practices of minimal-intervention winemaking. They are proving that Sanlúcar is not merely a source of fortified wine, but a region capable of producing wines of genuine crystalline purity, saline depth, and gastronomic complexity — provided the winemaker has the courage to look at Palomino not as a neutral grape but as a noble one, and at albariza not as a stage for oxidation but as a great terroir in its own right.

The legacy of Muchada-Léclapart extends beyond the bottle. They have become a reference point for the unfortified wine movement in Andalucía — a producer who demonstrates that biodynamic farming, indigenous yeasts, minimal sulfur, and old-vine concentration can coexist with commercial viability and international recognition. Their wines are found on the lists of discerning restaurants and shops from Seville to New York. Their approach — biodynamic, hand harvest from 20 to 90-year-old vines at 7 tons/hectare, spontaneous fermentation, 3g/hL SO2, no filtration, no clarification — has influenced a generation of younger producers in the Sherry Triangle and beyond. And their commitment to Palomino as a noble variety — to the idea that it is only "neutral" when overcropped — is a model for viticulture in an era of homogenisation. As a collaboration between a cult Champagne producer and an Andalusian architect, they have also demonstrated that the best wine projects often come from the most unlikely partnerships.

The future of Muchada-Léclapart is tied to the future of Sanlúcar's unfortified revolution. As the region faces the challenges of climate change, rural depopulation, and the slow decline of traditional Sherry consumption, Alejandro and David continue to expand their work — not in hectares, but in depth. More old vineyards of Palomino and Moscatel. More experiments with ceramic-coated steel and old botas. More wines that push the boundaries of what Sanlúcar can be. And more wines that taste of nothing but the Atlantic — the chalk, the salt, the old vines, and the quiet persistence of two men who met by chance in a Champagne harvest and ended up redefining a 500-year-old wine tradition. The story of Muchada-Léclapart is the story of an architect and a Champagne vigneron who chose to honour a region by breaking its rules — wines that do what they say and say what they do. It is a story that is still being written — one bottle, one vintage, one act of unfortified rebellion at a time.