Corta Y Raspa Palomino de Pasto Parcela la Vinya de Atalaya 2019

Corta y Raspa is the brand name for the wines made by a collective of small grower-producers based in Sanlúcar de Barrameda, ‘los Mayetos’.

What is this?
A neo-co-op?
A ‘Collab’ in device-world-speak?

Mayeto is a local term (in Sanlúcar, Rota, Trebujena and Chipiona) for a small-scale grower, whose fruit is typically sold to larger producers. Once there were more than 100 such, now there are less than 202. Given the low prices paid for fruit going to the region’s largely un-aspirational Finos (in 2019 the base rate was 36 euro cents/kilo), it’s a sub-marginal way of making a primary living.

Los Mayetos are a significant new voice among those re-telling the story of Marco de Jerez, aiming to recuperate the region’s history from recent generic, industrial, anonymous tendencies. 

‘Corta y Raspa’ is the brand name under which the group release low yield, high quality Palomino whites seeking to preserve-promote the identity of their vineyards.

Contemporary Spanish wines are best understood against a history of abandonment, loss and eventual recovery – the usual backdrop being the disruptions of phylloxera, Civil War and post-war economic depression. In Rioja and Jerez, however, the equally devastating story of abandonment- and-loss is a much more recent stand-alone failure of capitalism. In the mid-1960s (while the rest of Spain lay in economic tatters), both regions’ blazered, entitled Captains ran seemingly thriving wine regions ... and which they have simply buggered since. By the 1980s, markers of regional quality and identity in Rioja had been sacrificed to the shallowest of big company market tropes. In Marco de Jerez, 50 years of epic capitalist failure begins in the 1960s: big companies over-planted with the high yield Davis clone – Palomino California, the DO discriminated in favour of fortification, and ‘Sherry wines’ became narrowly described by a fetish for bodega ageing. The wines of Marco de Jerez abdicated any aspiration to greatness. Vineyard identity and the meaning of the soil were obscured, and significant historical styles and practices were lost (or outlawed by the DO).

Los Mayetos’ have erected Corta y Raspa as a collective brand, aimed at recuperating just one strand of the lost ID, detail and meaning within the fabric of el Marco.

• Collectively, these are vinos de pueblo, painting a picture of Sanlúcar’s Atlantic Pagos.
• Individually, they are the terroir story of several pagos and the families who work them.
• Stylistically, they are Vinos de Pasto, low-cropped, high quality Palominos reflecting specific terroirs, and only lightly augmented by bodega ageing. By way of level playing field, each of the Corta y Raspa wines are aged about a year in old bota, fully topped, without flor.

- Importer Note