CATI RIBOT/VE D'AVIOR
Mallorca, Spain
Cati Ribot is a 3rd generation winegrower making natural wines under the name Ve d'Avior (“from the past” in Mallorquin) in the town of Santa Margalida, in the northeast of Mallorca. Her family’s background was in the farming of table grapes, almonds, and olives, but in the 1990s her father Jaume planted international varieties (Syrah, Chardonnay, Cabernet Sauvignon) with the goal of making wine. In 2004, Jaume built a sizeable bodega next to the vines, and Cati started working with her father in the vines and in the cellar. In the beginning, this was a solidly conventional affair, making the full-bodied red wines that Spain and Mallorca were known for at the time.
Working with her father, Cati grew more and more interested in wine, eventually leading to training as a sommelier in Barcelona in 2008 (she related that she used to take the first flight each morning to Barcelona and the last flight back to Palma every night during this training). Cati pointed to this as an important opportunity to expand her horizons beyond Mallorquin wine: she tasted wines from all over Europe and the world, analyzed them and their methods of production, and connected with the burgeoning Catalan natural wine scene. She brought back different ideas about how Mediterranean wine could taste, and different goals for the family bodega. As she took on a larger role at the winery from 2009, the winemaking and the farming began to change (organic certification was achieved in 2012), culminating in 2014 when she began employing biodynamic treatments in the vineyards, influenced and guided by Joan Rubió, an expert on biodynamic and organic viticulture from the Penedès.
The most important of these varieties to Cati’s story is the red grape Escursac. Large-berried and late-ripening, it tends towards the production of wines with moderate alcohol, delicate red fruit, and soft tannins. To our knowledge, Cati makes the only bottled varietal wines in the world from the grape, from 1.2 hectares of vines that she and her father planted in front of the winery in 2006. Her passion for Escursac led to the planting of another 5 adjacent hectares in 2020.
Cati’s story took another important turn in 2019, as she took over the bodega her father had founded as Galmés i Ribot. Having already moved away from new oak and never having used any aggressive additives, Cati stopped employing sulfur in the winery, and Ve d’Avior was born. In the same year, she started working together in the bodega with Charlie Prymaka, who had a background in natural wine from working at Terroir and Les Cave des Pyrene in London and with Evan Lewandowski and Scott Frank on the west coast of the United States. Their collaboration was a great success, and, by chance, it started to grow. In the same year, Eloi Cedó (of Chato Paquita & Sistema Vinari) was looking for a space to make his wines, and Cati welcomed him to work in their space at Bodega Galmés i Ribot. Jaume Prats joined this collection of Mallorquin natural winemakers in 2020.