Grape gathering at Mas Sinén

Last Saturday, in the highest of spirits, I drove to Poboleda in DO Priorat, to the friendly Mas Sinén winery, to feel what cutting grape feels like.



The winery ready to receive the grapes.



Salvador was just leaving the winery to climb the hill with his four-wheel-drive and join the people already working up in the vineyard. When we arrived, they stopped and sat down to breakfast. My timing was perfect!

I was offered a piece of delicious coca de recapte, a precursor, some say, of Neapolitan pizza (in the Middle Ages, Naples and Catalunya were ruled by the same family for some time), and a drink of … not wine, but rather water from the fountain close to the winery.



Mas Sinén winery from the vineyard.



Refreshed, we turned to the vines, not before a patient Salvador explained to me the principles of proper grape cutting and selection. It may look easy, but to avoid harvesting gatolls (late-maturing clusters that are still unripe) requires attention. By the way, this is one of the advantages of manual harvesting; machines do not discriminate, but take everything, ripe or otherwise..

At the beginning, all was very well; it was fun, it was relatively early, and friendly clouds obscured the sun.



Carinyena clusters freshly cut.



However, after two hours of bending continuously to reach the grapes, my back started to remind me of several things: my overweight, my sedentary habits, and having left behind my 50th birthday. To compound things, the clouds cleared and the sun started to shine down on our backs.



Tough work ahead (at least for me!)



One hour later, to my shame, I had to sit down in the shade, utterly exhausted, while my fitter, leaner and younger colleagues clicked on merrily. Fortunately, lunch time was near, and I could make a relatively honourable retreat to the winery.



The Montsant ridge protects from Northern winds.



There Salvador was entertaining some visitors, who looked curiously at my rather battered appearance and agreed with me about the high quality of the wine they were sipping: the new Petit Mas Sinén. After they left, Conxita and Salvador prepared lunch: fresh, real tomatoes (nothing to do with the somewhat similar fruits found in the cities’ markets) and lettuce, small Arbequina olives, coca de recapte, Catalan sausage and fried white beans, sweet coca with dark chocolate. Excellent! Some friends of the winery came for coffee, and we sat for some time discussing the harvest and future projects of this dynamic pair.



Skins float to the surface to form the cap.



After coffee it was time for work (light this time – or perhaps the lunch had given me extra strength): a small tank of Merlot was fermenting, and the cap, formed by the skins and pips that float to the surface, had to be broken and mixed with the must below. In the process, the gas foams through the must showing off the beautiful pink colour that contrasts with the dark cap.

After breaking the cap, the gas foams up showing the beautiful colour.

This process is called pigeage, and is done by mechanical means in bigger tanks, but has to be performed manually five to six times per day in the smaller containers.

Manual pigeage.



Bloodstains? Wrong! Merlot juice!



Suddenly it was seven in the evening. I had to drag myself to my car and leave Poboleda, thankful to Conxita and Salvador for an amazing, if exhausting, day. I must come back next year, but better trained!

Happy, tired me.

Clos Martinet vertical: today may be a great day…

The lyrics of the song by the local folk singer Joan Manel Serrat were dancing in my head as I drove towards Priorat. This may be a great day…will it? The first steps were clear and had its roots some months before.

When I was visiting Mas Martinet in March, Josep Lluís Pérez, while discussing with him his first wines, made a remark: “We must make a vertical tasting of Clos Martinet!” I agreed heartily, and, with the help of Oleguer from Vins Noè, gathered a group of twelve fortunate wine lovers, including some top bloggers like David González (Adictos a la Lujuria), Jaume Aguadé (Vins de Catalunya) and Ricard Sampere (Els vins que vaig tastant).



Josep Lluís Pérez



We first met in Mas Martinet with Josep Lluís and then visited his Serra Alta vineyard. I had been there in March; the sight was more astonishing then, with all the iron rings plainly in view, but now it was beautiful with all the green shoots blooming.

Serra Alta in March



Serra Alta in May



There, by the plot, we could enjoy an impromptu master class about vineyard management by Josep Lluís. His absolutely scientific approach (he had figures and ratios for everything) left us speechless, especially those with scientific background. He spoke, among other things, of vigour, production limitation, watering, leaf surface, bag-in-box wines…always with this scientific yet practical approach.

Some of the happy participants

A phone call from his daughter Sara pulled us back to reality and the winery. There we met her laying the last glasses for the tasting.

The grapes-to-be

I (most of us, perhaps) had several goals in mind:

• The most obvious, enjoy a bunch of excellent wines 
• Meet Sara and Josep Lluís and benefit from their knowledge and personality 
• Last but not least: check whether great Priorat wines age well. This was a big discussion from the beginning of Priorat’s new era, and many voices had cast doubts on the aging potential of wines with a high proportion of Garnatxa.

Let us start with the wines.

The first was 1990. This was in fact still a wine made together with Rene Barbier, Alvaro Palacios and Carles Pastrana, and bottled under different labels for each of them. Very much alive, with utter elegance.

The second bottle was 1993, the second year than Josep Lluís made his wine independently. I was a little bit disappointed; I had looked forward to tasting again a 1992, the first Clos Martinet I had, but never look a gift horse etc…And 1993 did compensate: big, flowery, long, one of the best.

1996, said Josep Lluís, was his last wine. Sara answered back instantly: “It was my first, not your last. You still have a lot of wines in you!” It was great to witness the play between the two personalities, sometimes agreeing, sometimes not; after all, as explained in my previous post, if he is the scientist, she is the philosopher, or perhaps the mystic (thanks, Oriol!).

The lineup

1998 was a wine in turmoil. Sara explained that, after some 12 years, their wines undergo a transformation from big, youthful puppies to more elegant, sedate adults. 1998 had just done this, and showed still many primary and secondary aromas, but the tertiaries had started to appear. A great wine nevertheless; racing with 2000 in the preference of many.

2000 was perhaps the most appetizing for me. Still young, very fresh, fruity, big, but starting to migrate to the senior status.

2004 was in comparison young and, although it showed plenty of potential, needed time to show its hand.

As Sara and Josep Lluís explained, with aging, after the twelfth year transformation, wines smoothed the differences between vintages and tended to homogenize, showing the minerality and common terroir underneath. 

I have now little doubt that Priorat wines can age well, and will have to seriously plan ahead to be able to taste these memorable wines at a riper age than I am doing now.

Explanations by the two winemakers were both precise and emotional. They remembered the details of each year in terms of weather and coupage (there was a trend to increase Carinyena and decrease Cabernet) and seemed very happy to share these memories and their wines with us. It was a real pleasure to be invited to this event, which will be one of my most remarkable wine memories so far.

Sara and Josep Lluís

But the day was not over. In the afternoon, after a quick but rewarding visit to Mas Sinén to taste, just before bottling, their Coster 2009, Mas Sinén Negre 2009 and a surprise they have up their sleeve (I am looking forward to it!), I was back home in time to see FC Barcelona beat Manchester Utd to our fourth Champions League title.

It sure was a great day!!

http://www.doqpriorat.org/eng/index.php

http://www.masmartinet-ass.com/eng/index.html
http://www.massinen.com/

Mas Sinén: the masia at the end of the road

Mas Sinén is at the end of 2 km of dirt track starting from the village of Poboleda’s comparatively huge church (popularly known as the Cathedral of Priorat). This small winery, with the official name of Celler Burgos Porta, was started seven years ago by Salvador Burgos and Conxita Porta. Salvador has long experience in the wine world, having led the Poboleda Cooperative for several years and taken part in the Mas Igneus project, and comes from a family with winemaking tradition starting in the early 1800s.

The couple revitalized the estate, which included old vines in costers and a 17th century masia (country house), overhauled the main structure to house the winery and built a partially underground aging cellar. Wine goes from winery to aging cellar by gravity.

The old house is surrounded by the vineyards, with soils in which the slatey llicorella predominates. In the higher reaches, the steep costers hold the old Carinyena and Garnatxa vines while the lower grounds have been planted more recently with Cabernet Sauvignon and Syrah. Vineyard management follows the rules of the Catalan Council for Ecological Agriculture Production (CCPAE) and bottle labels are stamped to that effect. They are now also embracing biodynamic farming practices.

Technical management is in the capable hands of Toni Coca, a well known consulting oenologist of several Priorat and Montsant wineries.

Production is small and self-limited, with a maximum of 25.000 bottles not yet reached. The remaining grapes are sold to other wineries.

In selected years they produce a white, Mas Sinén Blanc, 100 % Garnatxa Blanca with 5 months aging in French oak. It is well structured, round, with slight wood hints, buttery and with a lot of fruit.

As for reds, the Mas Sinén Negre is a blend of Garnatxa, Carinyena, Cabernet Sauvignon and Syrah, aged for 12 months in French oak. Moderately deep cherry red, very clean to the eye, with aromas of tobacco and black fruit. In the mouth it is velvety, without outstanding tannins, confirming the black fruits and with a long finish.

The top wine, Mas Sinen Coster, comes from the older vines of Garnatxa and Carinyena, growing in the steep costers, and is aged for 12 months in French oak. It is one step ahead of its brother in everything: deeper colour, more complex and intense aromas including red fruits (cherry) and leather notes. In the mouth is bigger, more powerful, with a very long finish and more mineral notes. I am not a fan of very old wines, but I am curious to see its development over 10 to 20 years.

It is a pity for us Catalans that a lot of the already small production is exported, boosted by high ratings from Parker. However, it is a good excuse to visit Priorat’s rugged terrain and hardy people and share a bottle.


http://www.doqpriorat.org/eng/index.php
http://www.massinen.com/
http://www.masigneus.com/
http://www.domontsant.com/

Priorat, the hidden phoenix

In the 70’s, when I was in my teens, my father would sometimes bring home a demijohn of Priorat. It contained a dark, strong, sweetish red wine. In a nutshell, that was the definition of Priorat in those years: wines were rough, very alcoholic (perhaps 16 – 19 %) and usually unbottled. And in many cases, exported elsewhere to give body to less muscular wines.

Priorat boasts a long tradition in winemaking; indeed, the name itself comes from the Carthusian Priory at Scala Dei that fostered winemaking in the area since the 12th century. And before that, wines from the Tarraconensis had been on high demand at Imperial Rome’s best tables.

However, Priorat villages, once rich and prosperous when French wine production all but disappeared due to Phylloxera, were sinking steadily into nothingness due to the high cost of vine growing and low prices of the final product, as it was then. Population had shrunk by half in 100 years.

Suddenly, at the end of the 80’s, a small group of pioneers (Barbier, Glorian, Palacios, Pastrana, Pérez), with great winemaking know-how and even greater faith in Priorat’s potential, started 5 tiny cellars and spawned a handful of wines (Clos Mogador, Clos Erasmus, l’Ermita / Dofí, Clos de l’Obac, Clos Martinet) blending grapes of old Garnatxa and Carinyena vines with younger ones of Cabernet Sauvignon, Merlot and Syrah.

With their winemaking prowess they created wines that were dark, big and strong, but also mineral, well rounded, with the alcohol (13.5 to 15%) well integrated in the structure, and showed that Priorat could supply world class reds that, additionally, had a distinct personality.

Just a remark: I said “world class reds”. Curiously, while in most languages red wine is called red (rouge, rosso, rot...) in Catalan it is called black (negre). Has it something to do with Priorat’s rich colour? Who knows...

After the pioneers others came, mostly following their pattern, which was further blessed with excellent ratings from the international wine gurus.

Twenty years later the initial wines are still among the best, and with the bonus of consistency throughout these years and the fact that the first vintages have aged well. In the meantime, new stars have appeared: for instance, Cims de Porrera, Clos Dominic, Ferrer Bobet, Mas Doix, Mas Sinén, Nin, Terroir al Límit, Trio Infernal, Vall Llach, to name only some of those whose wines I have tasted. And a number of outsiders to be followed with care.

Apart from the reds, some whites are available, usually based on Garnatxa Blanca with the addition of Macabeu, Pedro Ximenez and Moscatell. And a few winemakers produce natural sweets and rancis, reds oxidized for long years in their casks to a golden, complex finish.

The quality factors at work are several:

• poor soils of llicorella (slate pieces that reflect light and give good draining)
• old vines growing in costers (steep slopes in the rocky hills), with optimal sun exposure
• Mediterranean/continental climate with lots of microclimates due to the hilly countryside, but in general with hot summers with big differences in temperature within the day, very cold winters (for the area), and low rainfall

All this combines to yield very low quantities (around of or less than 1 kg of fruit per plant) that have to be harvested by wholly manual methods. Indeed, some growers still use mules for some of the steepest properties.

With this quality potential and the high costs associated with such kind of vine growing, the best value is found, as I see it, in the upper levels of quality, where production cost is not so critical in final price. However, in the lower quality ranges, although Priorat offerings are excellent, their price makes them comparable to medium-high quality wines of many other regions.

All in all, the development of Priorat has been astonishing for anybody that did not know its potential. My father would have liked to see it now…

http://www.doqpriorat.org/eng/index.php

http://www.closmogador.com/

http://www.costersdelsiurana.com/en/index.asp

http://www.masmartinet.com/

http://debrujasyvino.blogspot.com/

http://www.masdoix.com/english/index.html

http://www.ferrerbobet.com/

http://www.massinen.com/

http://www.terroir-al-limit.com/

http://www.trioinfernal.es/

http://www.vallllach.com/