The first contacts between Sergi Colet and the members of Equipo Navazos took place in 2003, and already in 2005 a collaboration was seriously studied with the purpose of making sparkling wines in the Sherry District. The starting point was our certainty about some structural similarities between Champagne and biologically-aged Sherries: vineyards grown on white chalky soils, the relatively neutral character of the base wines, the importance of a second yeast intervention in the production process, etc. There was also the idea of playing with dosage wines in order to produce different sparkling wines, inspired by the different types of Sherries.
We immediately coincided that there is a fascinating and yet-unexplored territory, and in May 2007 we started fieldwork and tests. The original idea was—and still is—a joint effort where the added know-how and experience of both parts would enable the production of quality sparkling Palomino-based wines in the Sherry District where the character would come not as a result of fruit and primary aromas but from the chalky minerality and the action of flor yeasts, as well as gentle oxidation notes. This part of the project (Navazos-Colet) is still in progress, although commercial releases are not to be expected yet.
In the meantime, Colet and Equipo Navazos have experimented with other parameters, as in the game of combining small amounts of flor yeasts and/or lees for the second fermentation of Penedés sparkling wines. And also experimental disgorgement tests, trying different base wine profiles and dosage combinations with traditional Andalusian types (be they from Jerez, Montilla, or Sanlúcar): dollops of fino, manzanilla, amontillado, palo cortado, oloroso, sweet PX, Cream… The initial approach was to test how far we could go with the Andalusian Sparkling project, but with time COLET-NAVAZOS realized that some of these Catalan sparklers of southern spirit (a crossbreed described as “saleroso mestizaje”, in the words of Josep Roca) were truly serious and elegant wines, so we have decided to release some of them to the market
Namely Colet Navazos Extra Brut and Extra Brut Reserva.