Why it matters
The producer
Celler Dumenge is a pét-nat project in the Penedès appellation of Catalonia, built on three Catalan grapes that most producers in the region were moving away from. It was started in 2019 by Laia Esmel, Jaume Vilaseca, and Oriol Roig, three people from the village of Sant Jaume Ses Oliveres in the Anoia River Valley. Laia and Oriol were already working professionally in wine. Oriol brought something rarer: five generations of vineyard management in the same valley. Jaume came from photography, with longstanding ties to the wine world.
The winery sits beneath the residential floor of a building in the village, reconstructed as a micro-winery. The range is three wines, all made without additions, all from grapes grown in named parcels in the Anoia River Valley. When Jaume and Laia talk about what they are making, they consistently redirect from cellar technique to the origin of the grapes. That is an explicit choice, not a stance.
Place and vineyards
Where the wines begin
Penedès is the large DO covering the inland plateau and coastal hills south and west of Barcelona. Its best-known product is Cava, the traditional-method sparkling wine that for decades drove the region's economy and shaped its planting decisions. Xarel-lo, the thick-skinned white grape native to this part of Catalonia, became the backbone of Cava blends, valued for its acidity, its oxidation resistance, and its ability to hold a mousse over years of ageing.
In the cellar
Vineyards and cellar
Dumenge sources its three grapes from named parcels rather than from the broader Penedès appellation pool. Xarel-lo comes from Viña Barceló, Sumoll from the Finca Cal-Mus vineyard. The Xarel-lo Vermell is sourced from a single parcel, fermented, bottled, aged on lees, and disgorged.
In the cellar, the founding principle is no additions. No sulphur additions, no commercial yeasts, no dosage. The pét-nat method means the wine is bottled before primary fermentation has finished, and the remaining sugar converts to alcohol and carbon dioxide inside the sealed bottle. A lightly sparkling wine emerges, with the faint cloudiness of unfiltered lees. Alcohol is kept deliberately low: the 2023 Xarel-lo is 10%. The Xarel-lo Vermell 2023 follows the same pét-nat path, with lees ageing and disgorgement before release. For Sumoll, the process remains less publicly documented, but the no-addition principle applies across the range.
Wines to know
The range in view
The range is three bottles.
Xarel-lo: The primary wine, made from 100% Xarel-lo from the Viña Barceló parcel. Dry, sparkling, and light in alcohol. The 2023 vintage is bottled at 10%. The 2021 Xarel-lo Ancestral showed lemon, pine, and wild herb on the nose, with lactic roundness in the mouth, a soft mousse, and a clean, mineral finish. Those notes reflect the grape's natural aromatics on calcareous clay, without oak, dosage, or corrective additions.
A useful way in
A bottle to begin with
Start with the Xarel-lo. It is the founding wine of the project, the one born from that September 2019 harvest, and the most fully documented of the three. The 2023 is 100% Xarel-lo from the Viña Barceló parcel, bottled at 10% alcohol as a dry, naturally sparkling pét-nat. In the glass it gives lemon, pine, and wild herb, a gentle mousse, lactic softness in the mid-palate, and clean acidity on the finish. Nothing has been added to it. It shows exactly what the Anoia River Valley's calcareous-clay soils and a fifth-generation vineyard manager can produce from a grape that most of the region was treating as a Cava component.