Winemakers from Priorat in the hills south of Barcelona have drawn inspiration from Oregon and other New World regions to create some of Spain's most expensive wines, fetching about $100 per bottle and finding a market in the U.S.
Techniques range from gravity-fed wineries that let the wine stream without the use of pumps to delicate grape-handling procedures honed by pinot noir growers in Oregon's Willamette Valley and applied to old-vine grenache and carignan grapes in some of Spain's steepest vineyards.
While Priorat's viticultural history dates back to monks in the 12th century, devastation from phylloxera in the 1890s followed by decades of winemaking in cooperatives mean it's only since the 1990s that the region has sought to produce more refined wines competing at the quality end of the market.
"Technologically, wine is evolving constantly," Sergi Ferrer-Salat, co-founder of Ferrer Bobet, said in an interview in London during a recent Decanter tasting. "In the New World there's a lot of experimentation going on. For us the Pacific Northwest was a bit of a reference in gravity-fed wines."
Ferrer Bobet built its winery in 2002, just as the region's winemakers were starting to carve a niche for fresher, more elegant styles of wines.
Over the past decade its wines, and those of its neighbors, have established a reputation for regional personality, aging potential and quality, partly achieved through more rigorous grape selection.
"Easily 50 percent of what's produced by the vine ends up not being put in the bottle," Ferrer-Salat said.
Ferrer Bobet's hand-harvested Seleccio Especial 2010 from 100-year-old vines is priced at $99.95 at Sherry-Lehmann in New York while its Vinyes Velles wine from the same vintage carries a $49.95 tag, according to the merchant's website. Prices are similar elsewhere, according to Wine-Searcher.com.
Valenti Llagostera of Mas Doix, whose ancestors have been making wine in the Priorat since the 1820s, said his family switched from using the local cooperative to making their own wine with the 1999 vintage, using 50 percent carignan and 50 percent grenache from old vines.
For the family, which won medals for wine in Paris and Barcelona in the 1870s and 1880s, it was a return to its roots.
"From the very beginning the U.S. became our main market," he said at the same London event in March. "The Spanish market for Priorat wines has never been a very important market because of the price. Because of the characteristics of the place, wines from Priorat are more expensive than average."
Steep slopes, arid land, vineyards at an average elevation of 1,600 feet and rising above 2,000 feet and temperatures that reach 104 Fahrenheit in summer make the vineyards hard to work.
"Today we are exporting to up to 20 different countries, but the U.S. continues being our most important market," Llagostera said.
His Celler Mas Doix 'Doix' Costers de Vinyes Velles Priorat DOCa 2007 is priced at Hart Davis Hart Wine Co. in Chicago at $100 per bottle, while Sterling Cellars in Mahopac, N.Y., lists the 2006 vintage at $104.99, according to Wine-Searcher.
After phylloxera destroyed French vines starting in the mid-1860s, Priorat grew in importance as a source of wine for Europe, until its vines succumbed to the infestation in 1893, when much of the land was abandoned.
Llagostera's family remained in the Priorat, replanting small pieces of land in 1902 with carignan and grenache.
"We had the oldest vineyards, which is very important in the Priorat, to get very good grapes," he said. "That's the reason for the wine."
SundayMonday Business on 05/24/2015