Alvaro Palacios, S.L.
Álvaro Palacios was only 25 years old when he moved to the lonely Priorat in 1989. He left his parents’ vineyard in Rioja (J. Palacios Remondo) behind. He joined forces with a group of friends to reawaken the sleeping beauty of the Priorat, which the prior inhabitants had mostly abandoned in search of a better and easier life in the cities.
A mystical place! An hour and a half’s drive from Barcelona lies a wild landscape. A place that seems to have fallen out of time, where you almost wonder whether it’s even marked on the map. The spell begins to take hold the moment you leave the main road. Suddenly, you’re in another world. Civilisation falls silent; nature grows loud. The air shimmers with heat, the cicadas chirp almost aggressively, and the air smells of Mediterranean herbs and hot stone. Vines grow on many of the slopes, proud vines pruned in the traditional bush style. It’s hard to believe that these vines glow so green on the terraced slopes. They seek out water metres deep in the barren slate soil, known here as Llicorella.
Red wines from Alvaro Palacios, S.L.
from Alvaro Palacios, S.L.
Together with José Luis Pérez, René Barbier, Daphne Glorian and Carles Pastrana, Álvaro Palacios became one of the Priorat’s principal rediscoverers and pioneers. In the beginning, these friends made wine together. One by one, they ‘restored’ the abandoned, partly ancient plots of land, which were overgrown with gnarled Garnacha and Cariñena vines – hard, sweaty labour on steep slopes. They planted new varieties such as Cabernet Sauvignon and Merlot to blend them with the local grapes. It was not long before wine lovers took notice. As time passed, each of the friends developed and realised their own ideas.
Álvaro Palacios bought his first vineyard in the Priorat in 1990: Clos Dofí, later renamed Finca Dofí. He still has a particular fondness for this wine to this day – and with good reason: alongside its beguiling elegance and great complexity, it is quite simply incredibly drinkable. Finca Dofí comes from various plots in the municipality of Gratallops and is made mainly from Garnacha. His second venture was called Les Terrasses: a wine made from grapes grown on old vineyard terraces across various municipalities. These two wines laid the foundations for Palacios’s reputation. In 1993, he acquired the vineyard that would make him a legend: L’Ermita.
L’Ermita launched Álvaro Palacios to the very top of the wine world practically overnight – and not without reason, as he dared to market the wine as the most expensive in Spain, more expensive even than the established legend, Vega Sicilia from the Ribera del Duero. Several 100-point ratings from wine guru Robert Parker cemented the reputation of this exceptional wine. At the same time, L’Ermita drew the wine world’s attention to the entire Priorat region for the long term. This wild stretch of land is no longer a blank spot on the map.
Just as at his Descendientes de J. Palacios estate in El Bierzo, which he runs together with his nephew Ricardo Pérez Palacios, Álvaro has also developed his winemaking here in Priorat along Burgundian lines. He studied the characteristics of the individual plots in order to produce exquisite single-vineyard wines. Over time, he moved away from international grape varieties and focused on indigenous varieties.
Producer
Viñedos Lacalle y Laorden
In 2015 the two families of Zapiain and Lopez de Lacalle launched the Izar-Leku Mahastiak project (today Grupo Artadi) in Zarautz/Basque Country, with the aim of producing a table wine as well as a sparkling wine with Txakoli as the base wine. Today this sparkling wine is part of the "Viñedos Lacalle y Laorden" company - just like the premium single-vineyard wine "Viña El Pisón", though this wine comes from the Álava/Rioja region.
Montepeloso
The Montepeloso winery, located in Maremma, owned by Swiss co-proprietor and estate manager Fabio Chiarelotto, has earned a reputation for outstanding red wines. With a combination of mostly traditional and indigenous grape varieties, but also international varieties such as Cabernet Sauvignon, complex wines with a Mediterranean character are produced. This Tuscan gem is hidden in the hills of Suvereto, near the Tyrrhenian coast — one of the hottest areas of Tuscany.
Paladin
The vineyards of the Paladin winery are located in the border area between the Eastern Veneto and Friuli, where wine was already being grown in Roman times. At that time, the wines of this area were shipped in amphorae from the nearby sea ports to Rome, as reported by the historian Pliny.