Catalan winemaking tradition III

The industrial revolution of wine

Towards the end of the 60s and into the 70s of the 20th century, Catalan wine was, with the exception of cava, mostly draft wine, unbottled, or of low or medium quality.

One of the few icons of quality was theExtrísimo Bach, a semi-sweet white with a French style and a medium price. When Catalan wineries decided to produce wines of international quality, they mostly opted for prestigious international varieties. On the one hand, because good wines had never been made with the indigenous varieties and therefore had no prestige, and on the other hand, because the international varieties came with "instruction manuals". We already knew how to make a quality, aged wine with Cabernet Sauvignon, Merlot or Chardonnay, and what's more, it sounded good to local consumers and the varieties were well-known and prized in international markets.
This is how the Raimat Cabernet Sauvignon and Chardonnay of the Codorníu Group appeared, which immediately gained prestige in Catalonia at a popular level as mid-high range wines.

For export, the Torres Gran Coronas Mas La Plana (cabernet sauvignon) and Torres Milmanda (chardonnay) won international competitions and prestigious in France, and together with the wines of Jean Leon, a Cantabrian who had made a fortune in Hollywood restoration, who also planted cabernet sauvignon and chardonnay in the Penedès to make great wines that he sold directly to the United States, they gave Catalan wines made with these French varieties a good international reputation.

This successful model pushed the rest of the small and medium producers in the same direction, in a phenomenon that allowed the expansion of Catalan wines around the world, the modernization of production techniques and the consolidation of the Catalan wine sector beyond cava.

The Priory, another path

But there was another way. from end of the 70s, the already legendary group of "pioneers" or "magnificents" of the Priorat decides to produce high-level wines in this region, then depressed.

The project lasts a decade in which they recover old vineyards on the coast and plant new ones, without anyone believing the project or giving them any support, until finally they present the first wines, from the 1989 vintage, which they produce together and label each with their own brand and which obtain international acclaim. They are the wines of René Barbier (Clos Mogador), Carlos Pastrana (Clos de l'Obac), Josep Lluís Perez (Clos Martinet), Daphne Glorian (Clos Erasmus) and Alvaro Palacios (Clos Dofí, and later, L'Ermita).

The secret of these wines lies precisely in the fact that the Priorat was at that time a depressed region, which had remained on the sidelines of the Penedès cavista success, which made it impossible for the impoverished local winegrowers to replant and replace the old Garnacha and Carignan vines with more productive young and "fashionable" varieties. This made it possible for René Barbier and his colleagues to find this heritage of old vines of indigenous varieties, although it must not be forgotten that there was also a significant percentage of Cabernet Sauvignon, Merlot or Syrah in those wines. This fact together, of course, with the Priorat's exceptional conditions for viticulture, climate, orography and soil - the famous licorice - and an extraordinary work by those young winemakers at the time, gave international fame for the first time to Catalan wines made with indigenous varieties.

Current affairs, various models, various wines

At present, several models coexist in the Catalan wine sector, both at the level of wineries and denominations of origin. From those to have conditions similar to those of the Priorat, in terms of being on the edge of the DO Cava, and therefore having an important heritage of vines of indigenous varieties, such as the DO Terra Alta, which is the flagship of its emblematic white Garnacha or Empordà variety, which also has old Garnacha vines—ledoner, it is called locally—and Carinyena, to those that, like it happens in the Costers del Segre, being a place where there has been no continuity in the cultivation of the vine and there are no stocks of historical varieties, it has opted for the most internationally known foreign varieties, although recently work is being done to recover the variety found.

And there are also cases in which the various options are combined, as is the case of Conca de Barberà, where the native trepat variety, which was preserved for the production of rosé cavas, has now become an emblem and, apart from the excellent rosés, very interesting red wines are being produced, while wines and cavas of other varieties are also made there. This is also the case in the Penedès, where the previously mentioned "cavitation" has seen many indigenous varieties almost disappear, but where for some time the Xarello variety has been chosen, with which extraordinary wines are being made, the subirat parent and malvasia of Sitges are also being recovered, and in the case of red grapes, progress is being made with sumoll; but where much of the wine is still made and successfully exported with cabernet sauvignon, merlot or chardonnay.