DO Costers del Segre

DO Costers del Segre is a territory of great viticultural richness, with wines from seven different landscapes sharing a common origin: poor soils and a continental climate with Mediterranean influence -ideal for vine growing-.

Pyrenean wines. In Pallars the hectares planted with vines grow every year, mainly as a result of climate change. Producers and consumers agree that this DO's high-altitude wines are fresher, influenced by the local calcareous soil, the altitude and the temperature contrast.

From 1914, in Costers del Segre and more specifically at the Raïmat estate, a unique case of agricultural colonisation in 20th-century Europe took place. Thanks to the arrival of water with the new Aragon and Catalonia Canal, viticulture was introduced on 3,500 hectares of barren land.

Costers del Segre, whose historical antecedent is the Castell del Remei winery, is a DO whose territory is divided into 7 sub-zones: Raimat, Segrià, Pallars, les Garrigues, Vall de Riu Corb, Artesa de Segre and Urgell.

They range from continental Mediterranean climate areas in Raimat —dry, harsh and almost desert-like, where irrigating the vines is essential— to fertile valleys such as Baldomar, watered by the Segre and sheltered from the wind by the Montsant range, and also mountain-climate areas in the pre-Pyrenean Pallars.

The modernity of its wineries and of the wines they make stands out. And this despite Castell del Remeï being Catalonia's pioneering winery in the production of bottled aged wines: from its founding in 1780 and especially between 1889 and 1950, it led quality winemaking throughout Spain, to the point that only Viña Tondonia was comparable in prestige.

Agricultural colonisation in 20th-century Europe

From 1914 another illustrious name in Catalan wine history, Manuel Raventós of Can Codorníu, decisively shaped this DO's history. He bought 3,200 hectares of barren land there, progressively turned into crops as water arrived thanks to the new Aragon and Catalonia Canal. It was a unique case of agricultural colonisation in 20th-century Europe and still today, with 1,700 hectares of vineyard, it is the largest single-owner vineyard in Europe.

To complete this transformation, Raventós had 100 km of irrigation channels built to bring water from the canal to the Raimat lands. At the same time, to reduce salinity, he planted 50,000 trees, mostly poplars, which years later reached as many as 1 million. Curiously, when these trees were gradually replaced by vines once the land had been conditioned, they were used to make the wooden boxes that for many years characterised Codorniu cava packaging. To house the estate's workers, Raventós even had to build an entire village: Raimat.

Today DO Costers del Segre produces aged red wines from the international varieties cabernet sauvignon and merlot, and also from native varieties such as ull de llebre and grenache, plus white wines from the chardonnay , macabeo, xarel·lo and parellada varieties, among others.