Exciting first for American grown wines—Bokisch’s Lo Xalet Cava (champagne style sparkler) crafted from authentic Spanish grapes

Bokisch Vineyards' Liz and Markus Bokisch introducing Lo Xalet, America's first cava style sparkler, at their Clements Hills-Lodi winery.

Hang on to your hats, Lodi wine lovers, because the latest innovation coming out of Lodi is a doozy: The 2023 Bokisch Vineyards Clements Hills-Lodi Lo Xalet ($60). This is the first champagne method sparkling wine in California grown and crafted in the style of Spain’s cava (the Spanish word for sparkling wine).

To be an authentic cava style sparkler, a wine has to be made from the traditional grapes of Spain’s Cava D.O. (Denominación de Origen, or “Designation of Origin”), perched along the Mediterranean Sea in Catalonia’s Penedès region, south of Barcelona. The required grapes indigenous to Cava form something of a “holy trinity”:

• Macabeo (pronounced ma-kuh-BAY-oh)
• Xarel-lo (sha-RELL-lo)
• Parellada (pa-ray-YAH-dah)

The 2023 Lo Xalet by Lodi's Bokisch Vineyards.

There is also a little Chardonnay, one of the grapes of France’s Champagne zone, planted in the region, but it plays a minor role in Cava, currently the fourth largest sparkling wine production region in the world (behind those of Italy, France and Germany). 

These grapes are near and dear to Bokisch Vineyards because owner/grower Markus Bokisch’s family hails from Catalonia. Mr. Bokisch spent every summer there during his childhood, he and his wife Liz lived and worked for a short time in the Cava region in the early ‘90s, and they still return to the family nest once or twice each year.

We’ll tell the complete story behind the groundbreaking Lo Xalet (pronounced lo-sha-LAY)—the Spanish word for “seaside home” (there is, in fact, a xalet in La Ràpita where Bokisch’s family gathers each year)—but first, about the wine, because it’s always about the wine first: If you are a contemporary style wine lover, you will absolutely love the 2023 Lo Xalet.

Parellada grapes in Bokisch's Miravet Vineyard, Clements Hills-Lodi AVA.

Yes, it is a first-ever American bottling of this genre, but its sensory attributes add up to exactly what many of today’s wine aficionados are looking for:

• It is absolutely bone dry (zero residual sugar in the dosage), light, limber, lean, long and lively.
• Its fragrance leads with an almost briny minerality, with subtle sub-notes of fruit (citrus and green apple), dark roast coffee, slivers of honeyed almond and a nuanced “fresh rising bread” yeastiness.
• It is the snappy, palate freshening natural acidity that drives this airy light, predominantly minerally, unfruity sparkler from the bright beginning to its lingering end.

The first vintage of Lo Xalet consists of 55% Xarel-lo, 40% Parellada and 5% Macabeo—a formula that will undoubtedly change in subsequent vintages because Bokisch’s cava block, called Miravet Vineyard, still consists of young vines, and each grape variety will continue to evolve as the plants adapt themselves to the rocky, reddish hillside terroir of Lodi’s Clements Hills.

Markus Bokisch examining the rocky hillside soil of Miravet Vineyard, in the northeastern corner of Lodi's Clements Hills.

When it comes to Bokisch Vineyards, I’ve always let Markus Bokisch tell his own story, because he tells it so well without anyone else “interpreting” what he has to say. According to Mr. Bokisch, this is how the first, exciting vintage of Lo Xalet came about:

In 2017 I ordered cuttings of the three Catalan varieties from Foundation Plant Services (FPS), located in Davis, California—Xarel-lo, Macabeo and Parellada. Xarel.lo and Parellada have remained tightly associated with their homeland, while Macabeo has travelled to various other areas of the Iberian Peninsula over the past 400 years (for example, Macabeo is the dominant white wine in the Rioja, where it is known as Viura). 

I field budded the three grapes in 2018 in my Miravet Vineyard, located in the northeastern corner on the Clements Hills AVA of Lodi. Since I was only given 25 buds of each variety, it took me four more years before I was able to have roughly one acre of each of them. By 2023, I was able to harvest enough yield from each block to be able to vinify a cava-like blend.

Markus and Liz Bokisch with a rack in with which their Lo Xalet cava was hand-riddled.

Getting these three varieties into production was a 5-year endeavor. The next challenge was to see how to farm them to derive maximum flavor and ripeness. The Xarel-lo and Macabeo proved relatively easy to manage. The Parellada, on the other hand, was the more difficult of the three. This variety is prone to over-production and, even with a heavily thinned crop, a late ripener. It took us another two years to learn how to farm it well. 

Our protocol was to harvest and ferment all three varieties separately. We picked the fruit at a Brix [i.e., sugar reading] range of 21° to 22.5°, to keep natural acidity and vibrant notes. Each one was inoculated with yeasts that are commonly used in the Penèdes region of Spain, which is the capital of cava production. The wines were cold fermented at 55° F. for a period of three weeks.  

The finished wine aged for nine months on its lees [i.e., spent yeast cells] in tank. Afterwards, the wine was bottled and reinoculated for nine months of tirage [aging in the bottle following secondary fermentation], allowing it further aging in contact with lees. It was disgorged with no dosage, to keep it as dry as possible. The resultant cava expresses complex notes of green apple and white flower, along with brioche and cashew. 

Xarel-lo grapes in Bokisch's Miravet Vineyard.

We produced approximately 2,000 bottles of this very first vintage of cava produced in the United States. Half of this amount has just recently been released. The other half will be released over a period of two years in accordance with the Catalan laws of producing Reserva and Gran Reserva sparkling wines. Reserva wines must rest for two years on the lees of the secondary fermentation before it can be released. Gran Reserva must rest for no less than three years on its lees. Our intention is to discover, not only what combination of the three varieties performs best in the Clements Hills of Lodi, but at what age this sparkling wine truly express itself best.

This entire project has been an exciting adventure for our entire family. It falls in line with our having brought Albariño, Graciano, and new, high-quality introductions of Tempranillo, Garnacha Tinta and Garnacha Blanca to California. And it won’t end here. Perhaps a Catalan sparkling rosado of the variety Trepat might be next... only the future shall tell!

Markus and Liz Bokisch sabering a bottle of their Lo Xalet in a fitting celebration of the sparkler's debut.