Wine Of The Week: Albet i Noya El Corral Cremant

This Spanish sparkling wine is loaded with notes of toasted challah, savory herbs and a crispy, crunchy minerality.

The sparkling wines of Spain are often overlooked in favor of Champagne—why order Cava when you can sip something a little more French? Well, don’t sleep on Cava or Cremant, especially one from Albert i Noya. The pioneering Penedes winery has been making wines—still and sparkling—with essence and soul for decades, and that passion comes through in their El Corral Cremant. 

El Corral is a nod to the tiny, mountaintop vineyard (about an hour outside of Barcelona) where all the grapes are grown from. It’s tucked in around trees in the Ordal mountains, with soil so rocky that stones and boulders dot the vines. The Xarel-lo grapes are picked, pressed, conjured into Cremant then aged for ten years before released to the public. It’s ethereal and floral, loaded with notes of toasted challah, savory herbs and a crispy, crunchy minerality. It’s complex (it is ten years old), refreshing, and a fraction of what you’d pay for a Champagne of similar age. $90

Kate Dingwall is a sommelier and wine writer. Her work frequently appears in Wine Enthusiast, Decanter, Eater, Forbes.com, Vogue, and Food & Wine, and she pours wine at one of Canada’s top restaurants.