Behind the vine

Mireia Pujol-Busquets - Celler De Les Aus & Alta Alella - Catalonia, Spain

When do you think you fell in love with wine, enough to make a career of it?

I always say that I grew up surrounded by bottles. When I was born, my mother was working as a nurse and my father was a winemaker. Eventually, my father convinced my mother to start a wine shop. I spent all my afternoons in the shop with her, so I was always in contact with bottles (rather than vines). Then, my family moved to Alella, close to Barcelona, and bought a small estate. We lived nearby to our vines, so we were always coming to see them and I had a sense that I liked wine, but it wasn't a fairy tale. Sometimes, the vines took my parents away from me and it made it complicated to look at wine in a romantic way.

At the age of 13, I started to help my father by working harvest, cleaning boxes, and performing other tasks around the winery. I went to university and studied biology while working as a volunteer at an agricultural development foundation. After school, I worked for the UN for a year but realized that I didn't want to deal with all the bureaucracy or paperwork. I had spent my whole life doing things with my hands and working with the earth. So, I came back and asked for a job with my father, and it hasn't stopped since.

What story does your wine tell?

As a small winery, we have to be able to tell our story in two ways: the image and the product. The wine inside the bottle is a reflection of what we feel and think a good wine is, based on what we have from the vintage. It's about me, my father, and our team - who we are and where we are. The important things to us are what we want to convey to consumers: our place and our soil. We are in front of the sea, so we talk about the Mediterranean Sea and our region. Our soil has freshness, so everything we do has to be fresh and pure. We want to give people the feeling of how our wine is - the product inside the bottle and everything that surrounds it.

What misconceptions about wine do you think people should forget?

We talk about prejudices in wine a lot. We are a Cava, not a Champagne, so one misconception that people have is about our price. We get comments about the price of our wine being low, or good value, and while I love that people think they are drinking really good wine at our price point, we can't forget that we make Cava in Spain and our brand is a strong as it is. It would be amazing to avoid a world of misconceptions (in Sparkling wines, for sure), but it's not like that.

Another misconception is about grape varieties. I think we should leave it to winemakers to make a decision about what grapes to grow and what local varieties are the best to grow and make wine from. I'm a biologist, so I know what it means to find the right varieties that are adapted to your soil, and to climate change. We need to stop being obsessed with autochthonous grape varieties and start trusting winemakers that we will make the best wines we are capable of making.

What great things about wine do you think people should remember?

The wine world is more about the culture of wine than alcohol. Wine culture is important to history, education, and society. It's not just a bottle of wine. It's a whole ecosystem. We don't talk enough about the value that wine and vineyards give to the land. We are part of the lungs of some cities. In every place where a vineyard is planted, that means there isn't a factory or condo development. We offer a place for people to be surrounded by plants - an organized forest. Wine contributes to taking care of the ecosystem.

What is a piece of advice you would give to a woman interested in breaking into the wine world?

Do it. Just do it. It's important to have a good education and to have multiple experiences in the industry. Don't close your mind off to only one track in wine - discover the whole wine world. Check out a harvest, go to wine fairs, travel.

Who is a woman in wine you think everyone should know about?

Ana Spelt from Espelt in Empordà. My father taught winemaking at a local university, and she was his student. We talk together about being a part of a family winery and have long conversations about life and trying to arrange the worlds around us. She's someone who I go to when I'm a little bit lost and she's developing some amazing wines under her own name.

Where can women find your wine?

We are available all over the world, and you can find your local option here.