Javi Revert Simeta 2024
£40.75
The wine
Ruby, with an abundance of cherry and cranberry fruit complemented by complex herbal notes.
Simeta comes from a single old parcel. The high inland Valencia is a long way from the coast in every sense: limestone at altitude, cold nights, and a set of native varieties that survived because the region was written off as bulk country. Revert is among a handful of growers who went looking for the old plantings before they were grubbed up. Javi Revert works at Los Juncarejos in the Valencian interior at 700 metres, half his vines restored old bush vines that had been abandoned.
The producer
Javi Revert
View all Javi Revert winesJavi Revert was born and raised in La Font de la Figuera, a village south of Valencia, and is among the people rebuilding a winemaking heritage the region had largely forgotten. He farms twelve hectares of certified organic vineyard, predominantly north-facing, planted to old vines and indigenous varieties.
Valencia is not a name that carries weight in fine wine, which is precisely the opportunity. The interior sits high enough for real diurnal swing, the old plantings are field blends rather than monovarietal blocks, and the native grapes, Merseguera, Verdil, Trepadell, Arcos and Mandó among them, had been pulled up across Spain in favour of internationally saleable varieties. What survived tended to survive on the poorest sites, farmed by people too stubborn or too poor to replant.
Revert's wines are made from those parcels with minimal intervention: whole-bunch pressing or short macerations, indigenous yeasts, old wood or concrete rather than new barrels, and low sulphur. North-facing aspect matters more than it would in a cooler region, since it delays ripening and preserves the acidity that gives these wines their tension.
