Mesquida Mora
(mehs-kee-dah moh-rah) | Pla i Llevant – Mallorca
Bàrbara Mesquida Mora established the groundbreaking Mesquida Mora winery in Mallorca in 2012…
near the town of Porreres, producing wines in the DO Plà i Llevant and VdlT Mallorca designations in the southern and eastern areas of the island. Bàrbara’s wines form a rich mosaic recalling the diversity of Mallorca varieties while also representing the history of her pioneering winemaking family, with her own unique futuristic vision.
Upon leaving behind the winery created by her pioneering great-grandfather in 1945 in Porreres, Bàrbara started her project from scratch with historic vineyards inherited from her mother. Previously, Bàrbara managed the family winery for eight years, from 2004 until 2012, and was one of Spain’s first Demeter biodynamic certifications in 2007. Bàrbara has not only been a passionate practitioner of organic and biodynamic viticulture for more than two decades; she has also introduced a regenerative agriculture approach through encouraging biodiversity within her estate vineyards. Prior to her winemaking career, Bàrbara studied Medieval literature and Catalan language in Barcelona. Comfortably multilingual culture, art, and language are like air and water for her, informing every aspect of her work. Bàrbara is among the vanguard of a wave of young producers recuperating and contributing to the unique cultural and viticultural matrix of traditional Mallorcan agriculture.
The viticultural mosaic of her winery…
is made up of seven plots consisting of 20 hectares of vineyards certified by the Balearic Ecological Agriculture Council and Demeter for organic and biodynamic viticulture. Vineyards grow on calcareous clay, limestone, and cal vermell, a red clay soil rich in iron. In addition to championing native varieties such as prensal, callet, mantonegro, giró blanc, and gorgollasa, Bàrbara has retained some of the earliest French varieties originally planted in Mallorca by her mother and father more than 40 years ago. These plantings include old vine syrah, cabernet sauvignon, and chardonnay. Together, they represent a tribute to Mallorcan viticulture’s past, present, and future; living together harmoniously in Mallorca’s oldest biodynamically-farmed vineyard. This vineyard, called Son Porquer, is one of the most beautiful on the island, featuring an old mill standing sentinel among the vines, surrounded by trees. Bàrbara is passionate about preserving this vineyard’s history, as it is an essential piece of the history of Mallorca and a roadmap for the future. However, the future of Mesquida Mora lies strictly in the propagation of varieties indigenous to Mallorca, and she has begun the process of grafting over many of the foreign varieties.
Her passion has recently taken her to plant more than one hundred fruit trees throughout her vineyards, further encouraging the biodiversity of her environment, which promotes regeneration of the soil. Once found throughout pre-tourism Mallorca, this interconnectedness is the blueprint for the direction of her project in the future. When Bàrbara’s great-grandfather Jaume Mesquida, a peasant in poor, rural Mallorca, opened a small winery in 1945, vines and fruit trees were mixed in the vineyards as the apricot industry was a major business in the village of Porreres. Among many other things, by planting new grape varieties and bringing the first stainless steel tanks to the island, Jaume Mesquida contributed to the renaissance of wine in the Balearics. Now Bàrbara is bringing that unique Mallorcan story full circle by honoring her grandparents’ tradition by combining the knowledge of their practices with modern innovations.
The jewel of the family and one of the oldest callet vineyards on the island, d’Es Pou de Sa Carrera, near the town of Felanitx, is traditionally planted, as in the past, with fruit trees intermixed with bush-trained vines. The 80-year-old parcel is an important part of the identity of her beautifully perfumed and elegant cuvée Sòtil, considered one of the most exceptional red wines produced on the island, in miniscule quantity.
“To stimulate the health of our vines, we perform all the tasks by hand, following the most propitious movements of the stars. With the aim of bequeathing rich, fertile soils to the future generations, the management of our vineyards is based on a dialogue with nature: we sow our own vegetable covers, apply biodynamic compost and preparations as well as use infusions of medicinal plants. All of these techniques help us to achieve grapes of the highest quality, an expression of the triangle sun-climate-variety.”
In her tiny winery, Bàrbara is a minimalist, allowing her exceptional farming to do the talking, with very little intervention. All wines spontaneously ferment with indigenous yeasts, and sulfur levels are kept to the bare minimum during production, with none added at bottling, as vintage allows.
From her stewardship of old vineyards in Mallorca…
to her striking label designs and each wine’s names, the intention and energy of her project are powerful and clear. In Bàrbara’s words:
“I am very fortunate. I was born in a little paradise. Bathed by the saltwater and the sun of the Mediterranean, Mallorca (ACROLLAM) is my homeland. I grew up among vines, barrels, and grapes, and the years have led me to believe that there are no coincidences (in Catalan, casualitats), only causality. We live in synchrony (SINCRONIA), and nothing happens by accident. At a moment when I had neither ceiling (SÒTIL), nor floor (TRISPOL), I decided to strike out on my new path, Mesquida Mora, because the coincidences of life are only the tip of an iceberg called destiny.”
The cuvée names and label designs are all deeply personal and interconnected for Bàrbara; the relevance of each reveals her extremely high level of sophistication and commitment to artistic expression.
“The labels of Sincronia wines are composed of small fragments of colored paper, like life itself, representing the vines where they were born, composing a picture which evokes the Mediterranean essence of our island, Mallorca. If Sincronia Blanc is illustrated with a boat, it is because it symbolizes the will and ambition to cross new seas and oceans, while Sincronia Negre is represented by a lighthouse to remind us always of our home port.”
Her white and red Sincronia wines are two complementary entry-level cuvées produced from biodynamically estate-farmed grape varieties by Bàrbara. As with all of her wines, the Sincronia line is a love letter to the rich tapestry to not only Mallorca’s grape varietal makeup but also the complex cultural history of Mallorca.
At the moment, Bàrbara produces three special, limited cuvées representing some of the most unique and highly-regarded wines produced on Mallorca.
Acrollam Blanc is “Mallorca” in reverse because Mesquida Mora likes to work their own way, often “the other way around” from what is customary, defying the established status quo. The wine is produced from hand-picked, old-vine, indigenous varieties prensal and giró blanc. The Acrollam label depicts a woman searching for her identity and femininity, prepared to plunge into the sea. She is open to new adventures and the changes that may come, without fear of the waves of the storm. It represents her passion for life and feeling caressed by the salty texture of our sea. The label also carries a mandala formed by concentric figures that suggest the search for perfection, while the perimeter of the circle evokes the return to the cycles of nature. Acrollam Blanc is exceptionally complex and superbly textured; the result is one of the top expressions of white wine Mallorca has to offer.
Trispol, “floor” in Mallorquìn, is one of two complementary top cuvées produced from red grape varieties by Bàrbara Mesquida Mora. Trispol is the companion to her Sòtil cuvée, “roof.” When Bàrbara split from her family winery in 2012 to begin her project, she said that, along with prized vineyards inherited from her mother, all she needed was a roof and a floor. The label replicates the tiles she walked on throughout her childhood in the house of her maternal grandparents, called Ca’n Verdera, in Porreres.
Trispol is a cuvée composed of native callet and mantonegro grape varieties, planted by her grandfather, with the cabernet and syrah varieties, first introduced to Mallorca by her parents over 40 years ago in their historic Son Porquer vineyard. The vineyard has been farmed biodynamically since 2007. Trispol is a complexly structured red wine firmly rooted in the earth, offering the winery’s base notes.
The second red cuvée Sòtil, “ceiling” in Mallorquìn, is a haunting, ethereal wine showing the native callet grape variety’s pure essence. Specifically, Sòtil is the surface that separates two floors of a building and the space over which the roof tiles are laid. Bàrbara says that Sòtil also represents the sky, lightness, and one’s own way of referring to the cosmos. The label shows the blue sky of the Mediterranean, with a few clouds that try to hide the sun, because nothing ever has one single color. The central molding recalls the mandala of Acrollam. The grapes for Sòtil Negre are selected from her old callet vines in Felanitx on cal vermell (red clay) and the 70-year-old d’Es Pou de Sa Carrera vineyard in Porreres.
We are honored to represent the wines of Mesquida Mora in the US as we continue to follow this incredibly exciting, personal story into the next decade of development and rebirth of native Mallorcan wine. The wines of Bàrbara Mesquida Mora have something important to say, and we are listening.
