It took a century for Priorat’s tide to recede to the point of vanishing. From a peak in the late 1800s of around 25,000 acres of vines, this small inland region in Spain’s Catalunya was witness to blight, civil war and economic hardship that reduced its viticultural area to 1,200 acres in the 1970s. And what remained was under threat as people moved out to the coasts for more lucrative tourism-related jobs.
At the time, Cellers de Scala Dei had been relaunched, with an exceptional release from the 1974 harvest that grabbed the attention of a few people outside the region—specifically, a fellow living in neighboring Tarragona named René Barbier. He was impressed by Scala Dei’s Cartoixa, and by the region at large.
He invested in vineyards and pulled together a motley crew to help, including a lawyer, a local politician, circus performers, as well as others in various aspects of the wine trade, who he drew in with the idea of making high-quality wine in Priorat. In 1989, ten partners in the cellar released ten different labels, all variations on “Clos”—and all sporting the same liquid inside. This “Clos” wine caught the attention of wine critics, even under a generic appellation, “Vino de Mesa,” given that at 12.5 percent ABV, it was far below the denomination of origin’s minimum for reds, of 13.5 percent. Thus, within the lowest classification in Spain, it sold for what was then an astronomical price of 25€. As the initial group shed members, the core of those who remained started up five cellars that are still active today—Clos Mogador, Álvaro Palacios, Mas Martinet, Clos Erasmus and Clos de l’Obac—the First Wave of what was to become Priorat’s new modern era.
The Second Wave
Some locals in Priorat, being shrewd, salt-of-the-earth farmers, realized they could earn far more by selling bottled wines under the DO Priorat than by selling in bulk to random small businesses in Barcelona. It wasn’t an easy transition for most grape growers, as they’d largely lost their winemaking tradition, but it was helped a great deal by those who wanted to revive that tradition and raise the profile in the process. One such person was singer-songwriter Lluís Llach.
Llach is probably not a well-known name to Americans, but he’s as revered in Catalunya as Bob Dylan is in the States. While Llach’s mother was originally from the village of Porrera in Priorat, he had no ties to wine and, in fact, he doesn’t drink. But that didn’t stop him from partnering with his childhood friend Enric Costa to start a winery with the advice from the First Wave’s original five.
Llach and Costa planted grenache and carignan, both traditional vines in the region, and they also planted a good deal of cabernet sauvignon, syrah, merlot and cabernet franc, French varieties that were fashionable in Spain at the time. They carved terraces into the slate hills for vineyards and also planted on several flat banks of local streams.
Then they established a cellar, Vall Llach, in 1999, in the village of Porrera. They made wine in a similar vein as the others at the time: heavy extraction of the grape skins, picking late to get fruitier, higheralcohol wines; aging in barrels, many of which were new.
After Costa died in 2013, his son, Albert, took over his share in the winery, as well as the direction of the winemaking. Albert, now 35 years old, has a different perspective than that of the previous generation, having to confront an uncertain future in terms of climate.
“Ten years ago we harvested ten days later, but were getting the same final alcohol that we’re getting now despite these much earlier harvests,” he says, specifically referencing 2019 and its severe heatwave.
Costa finds that he’s had to rethink most everything that they’d been doing if he hopes to keep up with the changing climate and general wine-drinking preferences. And in doing so, Vall Llach is producing wines better adapted to the region and in turn, more in line with the more restrained styles people are looking to drink currently.
In addition to picking earlier, Costa says he’s been focusing on the region’s original grapes, grenache and carignan (called garnatxa and carinyena locally). These now make up the core of Vall Llach’s two top wines: Vi de Vila Porrera (mostly carignan, with a small percentage of grenache) and Mas de la Rosa (100 percent carignan).
“Cabernet sauvignon is very difficult here,” he says. “If you pick it early, at lower alcohol, it’s too green. If you pick it later, it’s all raisins and/or rot, and at 17 percent alcohol it won’t ferment. Because of these problems, we end up losing about 5,000 liters a year. But honestly, I’m happy to lose it; I don’t want to mix it in with other, far-better adapted grapes.”
Redefining Priorat
When Dominik Huber arrived here more than two decades ago, he was quickly dismissed by locals for his “crazy” wine experiments. The German vintner was pushing harvest earlier to produce wines with lower alcohol than was common at the time, and was aging his wines in large vessels to diminish the intensity of the extraction. These experiments found a home at Terroir al Límit, the winery he set up in Torroja del Priorat, a tiny village in the dead center of the region, and played a large part in initiating Priorat’s Third Wave.
His foreign ideas were often mocked in harvest chatter: “Hey, have you started your whites?” a grower might ask. “Nope,” another would answer. “We’ll do them next week, but I heard Dominik already finished his reds.”
Huber’s core philosophy is to focus on food-friendly wines. “I was having dinner at [Michelin-starred restaurant] El Bulli many years ago and nothing on the wine list really worked with the dishes,” he recalls. “I felt the wines took away from the food, and this is what I’ve been working to overcome. I want the wine I’m drinking to give me something, not take it away.” He often welcomes business associates with meals he cooks for them in the middle of his vineyards, where they can enjoy the cool settings at high altitudes.
His wines at Terroir al Límit may have started as a different sort of Priorat, but their style has become more of the norm with each passing year as more Third Wave winemakers have gained ground in the region.
And they continue to evolve: Tatjana Peceric, who has worked six vintages at Terroir al Límit, cites climate change as a challenge. “In addition to getting warmer, the weather is getting more extreme and we have to adapt to it,” she says. Peceric shares Huber’s radical idea to abandon oak-aging for their wines, and use cement tanks instead—another move that hasn’t gone unnoticed in Priorat, as several other producers have begun to do the same.
Take a Walk on the North Side
Like Huber, Alfredo Arribas arrived in Priorat nearly two decades ago. Originally from Barcelona and an architect by training, he started making wines in both Montsant and Priorat, with a focus on their southern reaches. His cellar, Clos del Portal, is tucked into a hillside surrounded by vines, perched above the generally dry Siurana River.
Arriving during the boom of the aughts, when the number of wineries in Priorat quadrupled in less than ten years, Arribas followed the original formula for big wines, such as those at Vall Llach 20 years ago. “I started out falling in line with the established style, but as the climate has been shifting, so, too, have my perceptions of what the region is,” Arribas says.
While many people may see Montsant as a “cheaper Priorat,” Arribas recognized the value of its cooler climate and lighter soils in what became his quest for lower-alcohol wines. After experimenting with grenache growing on chalky soils in upper Montsant, he began searching for ways to apply his experience to Priorat’s hot slate.
His newest project, Vins Nus (“naked wines”), looks to northern vineyards in both Priorat and Montsant at 1,600 feet and higher, where the vines have a relatively long ripening cycle. Arribas finds he can pick grapes that have good flavor as well as acidity, while keeping the alcohol low— characteristics he preserves through spontaneous fermentations of whole bunches and vinification only in neutral containers, whether steel, clay or old wood.
The result is wines like his InStabile No.7, a clarete—essentially a light red—with the crisp fruit one would expect from Priorat, but without the bite of alcohol. It’s one example in this series of somewhat experimental wines that showcase the freshness Arribas and his winemaking team are managing to coax out of the region each year.
In Priorat’s Third Wave, the top producers are getting more out of their wines by thinking more and doing less— as the idealized Priorat remains a moving target. Will it ever be possible to make another red wine at 12.5 percent alcohol in the region, as René Barbier and his crew did more than 40 years ago? Probably not, but growers continue to try, despite what the climate is throwing at them now. Here in Priorat, anyone who thinks they can stand still may see the stones swallow them whole.
Miquel Hudin is a Californian now living in Catalonia, Spain, from where he publishes the website hudin.com as well as the Vinologue series of wine-reference books. For this issue, he reported on the sea change he’s witnessed in Priorat’s winelands, as vintners head higher into the mountains in search of fresher wines.
This story appears in the print issue
of October 2020.
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