Though trained in Bordeaux, Barbier knew Priorato well. As a child he had accompanied his father on trips there to buy wine. Friends from Tarragona—writers and painters mostly—spent time with him at Gratallops, helping him salvage old vines and nurse them back into production. Carles and Mariona Pastrana, now owners of Clos de l’Obac, next door, were among them. Others, romantics perhaps, but also excited by the possibilities they saw in these old vines, bought vineyards. At about $100 an acre at the time, land was cheap enough. They restored, replanted, and extended the vineyards, turning to each other for help and support, and to Jose-Luis Perez for advice. Having caught their enthusiasm, Perez, too, bought land and, in 1986, planted the vines that would eventually produce his Clos Martinet.
Some, having made a start, got cold feet and pulled back, selling their vines to each other or to newcomers. That’s how Alvaro Palacios—son of the Rioja producer with whom Barbier had worked and by then a close friend—came to acquire Finca Dofi in 1989. Strapped for cash, they all thought of themselves as pioneers. (Palacios, too, was on his own. His father, having tried to discourage him from what he saw as a risky venture, refused to finance it. For several years Palacios traveled five days a week as a barrel salesman so that he could support himself and devote his weekends to his vineyard.)
The group shared resources. In fact, their sense of camaraderie was so strong in those days that it seemed perfectly natural that their 1989 vintage—their first—should be made in common as a single cuvée in a winery they had jointly set up in a former sheep shed. They continued to share the sheep-shed winery until 1992, but after that first 1989 cuvée, they made their wine independently of one another. Or they had René Barbier make it for them. As they labored together in those early years for what had become a common, passionately pursued cause, they did everything themselves. They must have looked to outsiders like an incarnation of that 12th-century vision.
In fact, given the limitations of their annual production—at that time it was only in the hundreds of cases—it might have taken years for outsiders even to notice what was going on. But in April 1992, in preparation for the Barcelona Olympic Games, Gault-Millau published a guide to Catalonia that included a thumbnail sketch of René Barbier and an account of the revolution he had instigated in Priorato. In giving the 1989 vintages of his Clos Mogador and the Pastranas’ Clos de l’Obac appropriately identical ratings of 18/20, the reviewer described their explosive fruit and rich texture. He also warned his readers that the wines, difficult to find, were sold, when available, almost drop by drop. The response was predictable—everyone felt that he or she had to taste it. The new Priorato was launched.
Barbier and his friends had sought out and bought old plantings of Grenache, and in an effort to restore the varietal balance that had been lost decades earlier, they planted yet more of it. Of the 1,000 hectares (2,400 acres) of productive vines in Priorato, well over 300 are now Grenache, more than twice as many as in 1980. There is still plenty of Carignan, but the vines are mature because little of this variety has been planted. There has been a preference to look to three classic French varieties—Cabernet Sauvignon, Syrah, and Merlot—for the structure Grenache lacks, with an initial enthusiasm for Cabernet Sauvignon gradually shifting to Syrah because of its less imposing varietal character. Clos Mogador, Clos de l’Obac, Finca Dofi, L’Ermita, and Erasmus—estates prominent in the revival—all use, to stunning effect, one or other (or all three) of these French varieties rather than Carignan. When the proportions are right and the Carignan fruit is from really mature vines, however, traditional combinations of Grenache and Carignan can be equally impressive. In fact, the elegant and distinctive 1998 Cims de Porrera that I’d enjoyed so much on the first evening of my visit (quite possibly the very wine that had inspired Joan Clos) was predominantly Carignan with only one third Grenache and a dash of Cabernet Sauvignon for seasoning.
Success breeds success. Torres, the leading wine producer in neighboring Penedès, has recently bought land in Priorato, and Codorniu has taken a stake in Scala Dei, one of the region’s older (and larger) estates. But the most heartening effect has been on small growers. As recently as five years ago, the Priorato cooperatives were distributing 40 pesetas (20 cents) a kilo for grapes to their members. Today, depending on the quality of the fruit, most growers in Priorato can expect to receive from 300 to 600 pesetas. In 1990, Alvaro Palacios of Finca Dofi started to buy small lots of grapes from the owners of old vines to make Les Terrasses, a cuvée distinct from his own estate wines. His aim was to augment his production in order to justify building a modern winery. The price Palacios was willing to pay for high-quality grapes (Carignan as well as Grenache) put pressure on the cooperatives to rethink their strategies so as to avoid seeing their best fruit simply slip away from them.
In 1991, five small cooperatives formed the Vinicola del Priorato, with a new and well-equipped central winery at Gratallops. Although they had a difficult start—old habits are hard to break—a new management team has, since 1995, introduced a system of paying members for quality rather than volume. “We still sell in bulk any wine that doesn’t satisfy us,” Jordi Miró, the sales director told me. “But that’s now no more than 5 percent of our annual production.” Most of the 25,000 cases Vinicola sells each year is Onix, a robust and lively blend based on the fruit from old Grenache and Carignan vines.
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