Bodegas Galmés i Ferrer, in Petra, is starting to age the wine.
t r a , i s s t a r t i n g t o a g e t h e w i n e .
The almond blossoms have dressed the island in white, Manuel. The day was one of those uncertain days, with sun and rain, which bring out all the brightness and splendor of the colors. I was going to visit the Galmés i Ferrer winery in Petra, which has been nominated “Vi de la Terra Pla i Llevant de Mallorca”. From La Cabaneta to Inca, there were hundreds of almond trees in bloom, wherever you looked, it was full of these beautiful black trunk trees with an explosion of flowers on their branches. I took my faithful friends Miguel and Manuel with me because I wanted to share with them the beauty of the landscape. But I had no idea how much. Tales of almond trees. The vast majority white, some pale pink, and others with an incipient green. Arranged in parallel lines on a carpet of velvety green grass, or on a red, freshly plowed earth, or dotting here and there the landscape.
Just when you thought you could no longer be surprised, you would find another almond tree, more beautiful and fuller of flowers than the previous ones. We continued from Inca to Petra along the Costitx road, and that definitely became a walk through an enchanted garden. This is our land, Manuel, almost an earthly paradise? Will we know how to preserve it?
The Galmés Ferrer family store, where they sell their wines, is next to the Petra Church. Small and cozy, it was full of people going to buy wine, and sitting at the foot of the huge wineskin was Galmés senior, dispensing bulk. This family has been making wine since 1884, more than a hundred years. They are the only ones of our land that make and bottle Mistela, that wine must extinguished to the alcohol. It is eaten as an appetizer and in the past it was, at Christmas, an exquisite gift.
His son Arnau, young and full of illusions, oenologist by the University “Rovira i Virgili”, has introduced technology. We visited the winemaking plant where, together with the curious old press, oak casks and centenary barrels, they have recently incorporated the new steel tanks with temperature control for the vinification of selected grapes and thus enter into the crianza.
Then we visited the cellar that is being restored next to the house of Fray Junipero Serra, in the street Barrancar Alt nº 14, which dates from approximately 1830. Here the crianza wine, aged in oak, will age silently for the necessary time. The first crianza, which is from ’94, will be released at the end of ’99, just in time to celebrate the end of the millennium.
We drank the freshly bottled ’96 white, made from premsal blanc, and fermented at low temperature. It is pleasant, fresh and fruity. Its color is pale yellow. It is a wine that you feel like drinking chilled, on a sunny Sunday morning, while reading the press or chatting with friends.
I don’t know what it is about this family, father, mother and son that captivates you. It will be the innocent candor of honesty, it will be the clean illusion that shines in their clear eyes, it will be the strength of those who firmly believe in what they do, it will be that they love our land and show it with their work: offering a quality product, raised, produced and bottled in our Island. Maybe this kind of people do more for our Community than all the bieles uncles who fight “por lo nostro” in the madriles. It will be.
