Priorat Struggles With Success
Among Spanish wine regions, Priorat can claim the most impressive recent transformation, emerging during the 1990s from obscurity to worldwide success. But despite the extraordinary progress, the debate between tradition and modernity rages unabated here. Boiled down to its essence, it's a showdown over which grapes to cultivate: the indigenous varieties of Garnacha and Cariñena, or imports such as Cabernet Sauvignon, Merlot and Syrah.
The Cinderella story is well-known by now. The region, nestled in the mountains west of Tarragona, has been a wine producer since Roman times, and the monastery of Scala Dei made one of the more reputable wines of the Middle Ages. Then, at the end of the 19th century, the vine louse phylloxera attacked. By the 1970s, most of the vineyards were abandoned and the region was in economic collapse.
But René Barbier, an idealistic Frenchman with family roots in Spanish wine, believed in Priorat's potential. In the 1980s, he enlisted a group of friends to join him in a winemaking project. Working together in a communal bodega until 1989, then on their own, they began to remake the region. Hard work paid off; by the mid-1990s, their wines were garnering high praise and commanding high prices.
"Everything is moving so quickly here," says Julián Baste, 28, whose father was an original member of the Barbier band. Baste now works with Barbier's son, also named René, in a winery called Laurona just outside the Priorat boundaries. "Wine changed everything: the economy, construction in the area, even immigration, as new people came to work the vines. Even tourism is growing now."
The Hostal Sport in Falset is proof of that. Though basic, it offers a level of modern comfort that's new to the region. Its restaurant is a gathering place for Priorat's winemakers, and in February I lunched there with Baste, René Barbier Jr. and Sara Pérez, daughter of José Luis Pérez, another of the pioneers. Along with friends, the three winemakers are engaged in a multitude of overlapping projects, exploring Priorat's possibilities. They are enjoying its success; now they want to find its soul.
"My father brought the family here from Barcelona when I was 9," Pérez recounts. "I was dying of boredom. I hated wine and I vowed to leave. But one day my tastes changed. I looked around and realized this was not only my home, it was the most exciting place I could imagine to work."
Pérez makes wine at Clos Martinet, which her father founded in 1992, at Cims de Porrera, in conjunction with a local cooperative, and with Los Ocho, a group of eight young friends. She also produces Venus and Eneas, muscular red blends from the Montsant region where Laurona is based. She's keenly attuned to the history embedded in the abandoned vineyard terraces that mark Priorat's steep hills, and in the character of the old men whose ancient vineyards supply the grapes for Cims de Porrera.
Pérez is jubilant about Priorat's progress, noting that while there may have been as many as 15,000 acres of vineyards planted pre-phylloxera, in 1990 there were fewer than 2,000 acres, along with only 10 bodegas. Now there are 42 bodegas working nearly 5,000 acres of vines. But at the same time she fears for the region's character.
"Cabernet Sauvignon is the second most planted grape in Priorat," she says. "It terrifies me. We spent 10 years trying to copy Bordeaux. It was the wrong path."
Pérez is working primarily with old-vine Cariñena, especially at Cims de Porrera. The grape was widely planted in Priorat after phylloxera, because it was easy to cultivate and highly productive. Though it has a reputation for making simple, rustic reds, she finds that in this terroir, with yields limited by the advanced age of the vines, Cariñena can make structured, richly fruity wines. But while her dedication to this traditional variety is sincere, her regret is ironic, since her father was one of the first proponents of Cabernet Sauvignon and Merlot in Priorat.
The elder Barbier explains that historical records aren't specific enough to prove exactly which grapes flourished in Priorat during its eras of glory. Probably, he suspects, a heterogeneous multitude of varieties. By the time he and his confederates got there, no one was certain what vines would produce the world-class wines they envisioned.
"I was from the Rhône," Barbier explains, "so I planted Syrah with the Garnacha. José Luis Pérez had a passion for Cabernet. We all took our own paths. Cariñena wasn't really in any of our projects. But first we discovered there was less Garnacha and more Cariñena here than we expected. Then we realized that it could make good wine."
Álvaro Palacios disagrees. "I knew Cariñena from Rioja, where it's called Mazuelo. In my opinion, the wines don't age very well." And though Palacios grows Cabernet and Syrah in his Clos Dof' vineyard, it's only because the grapes were already planted when he bought the property in 1989. His pride and joy is L'Ermita, a vineyard of old-vine Garnacha.
"When we got here, nobody believed in the old vines," Palacios recalls. "But old vines have always been my obsession. So I began buying fruit from the old vineyards that nobody else wanted." He wanted to buy the vineyards, too, but didn't have the money. Now he has the money, but those old vines are no longer for sale. "The locals have recovered their pride," Palacios sighs, with a mixture of admiration and regret.
The struggle is not only over grape varieties, though. The choice of grapes influences the structure of the vineyards, and this in turn affects everything from mechanization to irrigation to the broader environment. One of the most visible contrasts here is between the narrow, fragmented terraces (where the old, head-pruned vineyards struggle for footholds on the hillsides and must be worked by men with mules) and the broader terraces (suitable for tractors) that are creating emphatic new contours on the mountains.
Palacios, for his part, insists that Priorat can find true success only by cherishing the old ways, sustaining them where possible, re-creating them where necessary.
"I'm a romantic," he avows. "This landscape inspires us to live within a long and glorious tradition. Changing the landscape in order to facilitate the work is to betray that tradition and lose its potential. I don't believe that classic wines can come from these industrial vineyard terraces. Our task is to recuperate the possibilities of Spain's history and individuality."
Barbier is sympathetic, but skeptical. "To return to the mules to work the vines is a beautiful thing, a piece of history," he says. "But the mule doesn't work alone. You need a person, too. And few young people today are interested in working with mules. Also, these labor-intensive, traditional practices raise the price of wine production significantly. Priorat wines are already expensive. I don't want to make wines only for rich people."
These competing visions express the irony and challenge of Priorat. Barbier, Palacios and the others came here because the terroir gave a wine they loved. But that terroir was expressed in a varietal blend, a viticultural practice and a vinification technique that can't be entirely replicated today. So the winemakers must find new methods to reproduce the old wines -- or, from another perspective, create new wines that are still faithful to the old spirit.
The best wines answer these questions on their own terms. Whether it's the savage elegance of L'Ermita, the brooding power of Barbier's Clos Mogador or the polished richness of Viña del Ocho, Priorat wines show distinctive character and a heady appeal. They reflect the rugged geography of their birthplace; their aromas capture the fragrant mix of olives, almonds, pines and wild herbs that have taken over the abandoned terraces and mingled with the ancient vines.
And they testify, too, to the transformative power of great wine. Carlos Pastrana was another of the original pioneers. His Costers del Siurana was the original winery where all worked together in the 1980s. "At that time, Priorat was one of the most economically depressed regions of Spain," Pastrana says. "Now it's flourishing. I take as much pride in this social progress as I do in the success of the wine."
It's still an open question which grape varieties will come to dominate Priorat's vineyards, and what wine style will emerge as truly expressive of the region's terroir. But in their disparate ways, the pioneers and their heirs have committed themselves to search for truth as well as success. They seem to be on track to achieve both goals, an impressive accomplishment and a beacon for the rest of Spain.
