The 1405 Ledger, the Old Vines & the Singular Hand
Vinyes Singulars is six centuries of Penedès in a single pair of hands. The family estate — Cal Batlle, in Pacs del Penedès, less than an hour from Barcelona — has been farmed by Ignasi Seguí's family since 1405: twenty-three generations, more than six hundred vintages on the same land. When Ignasi took over, many of the vineyards were in disrepair; his focus then, as now, was restoring the old vines rather than replanting them. In 2009 he founded Vinyes Singulars to give the estate its own voice — a small, family-scaled project, quality over profit, capped around 15,000 bottles a year, while the rest of the fruit goes, as it long has, to neighbouring wineries. The farm is a world in itself: 120 hectares across five municipalities of the Alt Penedès, much of it forest, with cereals, olives, almonds, orchards and vegetable gardens around the vines — the whole surface certified organic since 2010. The vines climb to 500–600 metres on clay and limestone, cooled at night by winds off the Balearic Sea. In the cellar, the creed is absolute: no sulfites, no additives, no fining, no filtration — native yeasts, 500-litre chestnut vats, ceramic amphorae, and time. The philosophy is disarmingly simple: one vine = one wine. Each named parcel — Tires del Nan, Salinar, Magí Baró, Sant Pau, Les Planes, Can Martí, La Granada — becomes its own cuvée, which is how a single estate comes to make around thirty wines a year, some in editions of a few hundred bottles. Lithe, energetic wines, full of fresh citrus, oceanic salt and minerals — and on some labels, a snail: slow food, slow wine, six hundred years in no hurry at all.
The 1405 Charter, the 600 Vintages & the 2009 Hand
Some estates have a history; Cal Batlle has a ledger. The family has farmed this land in Pacs del Penedès since 1405 — before Gutenberg, before Columbus — and the work, effort, dedication and persistence of each generation kept the legacy alive from parents to children, until today the 23rd generation is responsible for maintaining and improving it for the next. Six hundred vintages: phylloxera, wars, the Cava boom, the industrial decades — the estate absorbed them all and kept farming.
When Ignasi Seguí took the reins, he found both treasure and neglect: old vineyards, many in disrepair, on land his ancestors had planted more than fifty years before. His response defines the project — restore rather than replant. In 2009 he founded Vinyes Singulars as the estate's own voice: a deliberately small winery, focused on quality rather than profit, bottling the fruit of only the best eight hectares or so, while a significant part of the harvest continues to supply local wineries — keeping the estate in the community's bloodstream, as it has been for six centuries. The whole farm was certified organic in 2010.
The combination Ignasi built is rare: the patience of a 600-year archive with the energy of a new natural-wine house. Combining the duty of tradition with a restless, forward-thinking spirit, he vinifies parcel by parcel — the old family vineyards mapped not as blocks but as individuals, each with its own wine. Around thirty cuvées a year, some just a few hundred bottles, all from an estate that could, if it wished, make a hundred times more. That it doesn't is the whole point.
"For us, minimal intervention means the non-addition of any preservative such as sulfites, nor any other oenological additive, and the non-filtration or clarification of any of our wines. We sincerely believe this is the best way to transmit the work of our estate and the character of our grapes, our territory and our vintage."
— Ignasi Seguí, Vinyes Singulars
The 120 Hectares, the 500 Metres & the Named-Parcel Hand
Cal Batlle is less a vineyard than a landscape: 120 hectares spread over five municipalities of the Alt Penedès, much of it forest, the rest a working Mediterranean farm — cereals, olives, almonds, orchards, vegetable gardens, and at its heart the vines. This is the estate's real terroir statement: the vineyard sits inside a rich and varied ecosystem rather than replacing one, and the family counts that ecology as the first ingredient of quality. The vines themselves climb the higher reaches of the region — 500 to 600 metres — on clay-limestone soils, where hot Mediterranean days are answered by cool nights softened by winds off the Balearic Sea.
Within the estate, the vineyards are known by name and remembered by year. Tires del Nan, Xarel·lo planted in 1957 — the source of the amphora wine, the ancestrals and the estate's most age-worthy white. Salinar, Xarel·lo planted 1982, Sumoll from 2010 — the chestnut-vat white and the amphora Sumoll. Magí Baró, Xarel·lo from 1970, gives the 42-day Brisat; Sant Pau, Macabeu from 1960; Les Planes, Parellada from 1972; Can Martí, the Sumoll Blanc planted 1959; Can Baltà, Garnatxa Blanca from 1982 and Malvasia de Sitges from 2009; La Granada, the Xarel·lo Vermell of 1965. Each parcel is vinified apart, because each, in Ignasi's conviction, is its own story to tell.
The estate is also a quiet gene bank. Alongside the Penedès classics, Ignasi grows the recovered and rare: Sumoll Blanc, nearly extinct until growers like him brought it back; Xarel·lo Vermell, the pink-skinned mutation; Malvasia de Sitges, the perfumed relic of the coast; and in the young La Granja parcel, planted 2013, a deliberate field blend — Xarel·lo, Xarel·lo Vermell, Monastrell, Forcada and Moneu, two grapes a breath away from disappearance. El Bosc goes further still: Garnatxa Blanca and Garnatxa Negra co-planted, picked and fermented together as the old vineyards always were.
Five municipalities, 120 hectares, and a farm that feeds itself: forest sheltering vines, cereals and olives beside orchard rows, vegetable gardens for the house. The whole surface has been certified organic since 2010, and the family treats the resulting biodiversity as infrastructure — a rich, varied ecosystem transmitted directly into the wines. Six hundred years of stewardship made visible: the estate as a living whole, not a monoculture with a view.
Planted in 1957, Tires del Nan is the estate's Xarel·lo motherblock and the source of its most telling wines: the Xarel·lo VS raised five months on lees in steel, the Xarel·lo Àmfora with four months in ceramic and a year in bottle, the ancestral Minipuça and Toma Castanya! — and the Tires del Nan itself, ten months in 500-litre chestnut vats and a minimum of two years in bottle. One parcel, half a dozen readings: the singular method at its purest.
Vinyes Singulars farms the roof of the Penedès: vines at 500 to 600 metres, among the region's highest, on clay and limestone under a strict Mediterranean regime — blazing days, then cool nights aired by the Balearic winds. The diurnal swing is what lets Ignasi make thirty cuvées that all share one signature: fresh citrus, oceanic salts and minerals, and the acidity to carry them for years.
The estate keeps the near-lost in production: Sumoll Blanc from Can Martí (planted 1959), Malvasia de Sitges from Can Baltà, Xarel·lo Vermell from La Granada — and in young La Granja, planted 2013, a field blend that includes Forcada and Moneu, varieties of which only a few hectares survive anywhere. El Bosc co-plants Garnatxa Blanca and Negra as the old farms did. Restoration, here, applies to grapes as much as to vines.
Chestnut, Ceramic & the Zero-Sulfur Hand
The cellar is a museum of vessels that happen to be the future. Ignasi works with three materials and chooses among them by parcel: stainless steel for the tautest readings of a vineyard; ceramic amphorae for slow micro-oxygenation without wood flavour — the Xarel·lo Àmfora spends four months in clay, then a minimum of nine in bottle; and, above all, 500-litre chestnut vats, the traditional cooperage of the Catalan farmhouse, which gives the whites and rosats their savoury, waxy depth. The Salinar white sees six months in chestnut plus a year in bottle; the Tires del Nan, ten months plus two years. This is slow wine by design.
The rules never flex: no sulfites, no oenological additives, at any point; no fining, no filtration; fermentations always spontaneous, on the yeasts the parcels bring. Ignasi vinifies each wine according to what the vintage actually gave — the method follows the fruit, never the reverse. Even the sparkling wines keep the creed: ancestral-method bottlings like Minipuça, each bottle disgorged by hand, and Menaixatruá, a traditional-method Xarel·lo whose second fermentation is sparked not with sugar but with the estate's own must, frozen at harvest for the purpose.
And because a 600-year farm can afford to be playful, the cellar door is open to friends: a vermouth made with the estate's Macabeu (no added sugars) by Biel Jover; Desembre, a naturally sweet late-harvest Xarel·lo from Corral Nou; even Sinergie, a grape ale brewed in the Aran Valley with a fifth of the estate's Xarel·lo must. Tradition here is not a museum piece — it is raw material, and the 23rd generation uses it like a toolbox.
One Vine = One Wine — the Singular Method
The method is six centuries old and reads like a manifesto. Farm the whole estate organically — forest, cereals, olives and vines as one organism. Restore old parcels instead of replanting them; know each by name and planting year. Harvest each separately; ferment each on its own yeasts, in the vessel that suits it — steel, ceramic amphora or the old chestnut vats. Add nothing at any point: no sulfites, no additives, no fining, no filtration. Give the wines the months they ask for, in vat and then in bottle. The result is not a range but a family of individuals — one vine, one wine, thirty times a year.
Tires del Nan, Salinar, La Granja & the Thirty-Cuvée Hand
Around thirty cuvées a year, each from a named parcel, each in editions from a few hundred to a few thousand bottles — whites, brisats, rosats, claretes, reds, ancestrals disgorged by hand, a traditional-method sparkler, a late-harvest sweet, even a vermouth and a grape ale. Every one: certified-organic estate fruit, spontaneous fermentation, zero sulfites and zero additions at any point, unfined and unfiltered. Here, the essential eight.
The 23rd Generation, the Restored Vines & the Next Hand
Vinyes Singulars reframes what inheritance means. Ignasi Seguí did not inherit a famous brand — he inherited six hundred years of farming, old vineyards in disrepair, and a duty. His answer was to restore rather than replant, certify rather than spray, and shrink rather than scale: a 120-hectare estate that bottles only its best few hectares, caps itself around 15,000 bottles, and sends the rest of its fruit into the community that raised it. The legacy is not the past; it is the method of carrying the past forward.
The second legacy is a living library. In an era when the Penedès was defined by three Cava varieties, this estate has kept or replanted the margins — Sumoll Blanc, Xarel·lo Vermell, Malvasia de Sitges, Forcada, Moneu — and vinifies them seriously, parcel by parcel, so that survival becomes a wine list rather than a museum note. Combined with the chestnut vats, the amphorae and the zero-addition creed, it makes Cal Batlle one of the quiet reference points of Catalonia's natural wine movement — 36 wines recommended on Raisin and counting.
And the third legacy is already written into the family's own formula: the 23rd generation's job, as they put it themselves, is to maintain and improve the family legacy until the next generation. After 600 vintages, the estate thinks in centuries, not campaigns — which may be why a snail crawls across some of the labels. Slow is not the opposite of progress here. Slow is the strategy.
"During more than 600 vintages made on our property, the family tradition has been perpetuated from parents to children until now, in which the 23rd generation is responsible for maintaining and improving the family legacy until the next generation."
— Vinyes Singulars, the Family's Own History