Pepe Marin is Back at Martha’s Vineyard

THIS YEAR’S UNDERSEA WINES, JUST RELEASED

An hour up the coast from this shop, twenty-four metres beneath the Mediterranean, there are bottles of wine sitting in the dark. They have been down there for the best part of a year. Nobody is refrigerating them, nobody is turning the lights off, and nobody is rocking them gently — the sea is doing all of it, for free, and doing it better than any cellar in Spain.

The man who put them there is Pepe Marin. Once a year he gets in the car, drives down to Moraira, and launches his new vintages here — in this shop, on this coast, before anybody else on the Costa Blanca gets near them.

He could do that anywhere. He chooses to do it here, and we have never quite got over it.

This is the one evening in our calendar we look forward to more than any other. Four wines. Twenty-four metres down. One man who can tell you exactly why that matters — and who has never once arrived without a surprise in the boot.

🌊 WHAT ACTUALLY HAPPENS DOWN THERE

Pepe’s cellar has no walls, no lights and no thermostat. It sits at Cabo de las Huertas, about a mile and a half off the bay of Alicante, at a point where converging currents keep renewing the water. The bottles are sealed with coloured wax and lowered into patented silos twenty-four metres down, where four things go to work on them at once and not one of them is switched on by anybody:

✔ A steady 15–19°C, all year, without a kilowatt of refrigeration
✔ The constant pressure of twenty-four metres of water
✔ Total darkness — no UV, no light-strike, no seasons
✔ The perpetual gentle movement of the current

It took seven years of research with the Universidad de Alicante to work out exactly how long each wine should stay down. They still analyse every batch that comes back up. And here is the part we like best: the silos have turned into artificial reefs. Marine life has moved in, and the posidonia meadows around them have started to regenerate.

The wine never touches the seawater. Nothing tastes of salt. Everything tastes further along than it should.

💧 READ THE FULL STORY OF THE SUBMARINE WINES →

🍾 THE LINEUP 🍾

Production is measured in hundreds of bottles, not thousands. Most of it is spoken for before it ever reaches a shelf. If you have been curious about these wines and put off spending three figures on a bottle you have never tasted — this is the evening that solves that, and it comes round once a year.

🥂 CV01 Cava Brut Reserva — D.O. Cava, La Granada del Penedès
Twenty-eight months on its lees before it ever saw water, then nine months at twenty-four metres. White peach, brioche, and a bead so fine it seems to go on forever. This is the one that makes people stop talking about the sea and start talking about the wine.

🥂 CV02 Cava Rosé — D.O. Cava, organic Trepat
A grape you barely ever see, farmed organically, given twenty-six months in bottle and then a full year on the seabed. Deep salmon, the creamiest bubbles of the four, and a bitter caramel twist on the finish that nobody expects.

🍷 W01 Ribera del Duero — Tinto Fino, Quintanilla de Arriba
Eighteen months in new French oak, then nine months underwater. Smoke, leather, cocoa and black fruit — and a roundness it has no business having at this age. Pepe will explain that bit.

🍷 W02 Rioja — Tempranillo, Laguardia
Fermented in French oak barrels, aged in new oak, then sealed with red wax and lowered into the Mediterranean for nine months. The producers say the vanilla and roasted coffee only appeared after it came back up. We will be asking about that.

And one we are not opening. The Alpha Ígneo 2021 stays in its box — volcanic Malvasía from the Canary Islands, matured on the seabed, nine hundred and sixty numbered bottles in the entire world. It is not a tasting wine. But it will be in the room, and you are very welcome to hold it.

🎁 AND WHATEVER ELSE IS IN THE BOOT

Here is the thing about Pepe: he has never turned up with only the lineup. Every single year there is something extra — a trial batch, a bottle that is not for sale anywhere, something he has been developing with a winery on the other side of the world. We have no idea what it will be this time. We find out at the same moment you do, and honestly that is half of why we love this night.

YOUR HOST FOR THE EVENING

Pepe Marin himself. The rest of the year he is somewhere else entirely, helping winemakers in other countries work out how to age wine on the seabed and opening new underwater sites here in Spain. He will tell you how his year has gone, what worked, what did not, and what is going down next — and he is very good company with it. Questions are always encouraged, and on this particular evening the man who made the wines is standing right there.

WHAT’S INCLUDED

✔ The Costa Blanca launch of this year’s undersea wines — four bottles, newly released
✔ A surprise bottle from Pepe. There always is one. We never know what
✔ The winemaker himself, in the room, for one night only
✔ Film from the seabed off Alicante — the silos, the divers, the bottles coming up
✔ A look at the Alpha Ígneo, one of 960 bottles in the world
✔ First refusal on wines that are genuinely difficult to buy

€60 per person | Limited to 16 guests | 6pm – 8pm
Sixteen seats, once a year. Martha’s Vineyard Moraira — where the wine has travelled further than most of us.

Learn more about our Submarine Wines →