Priorat Tasting this Saturday!

Eric Solomon Selections / Priorat Wine Tasting
Saturday - February 21st, 2009
11am-8pm

Priorat is a lunar landscape of a wine region. But from its wild and ragged turf a few dedicated (no, let’s call them obsessed) winemakers coax powerful, intense wines. Those wines bring ever-lofty prices, and are scoring equally lofty rankings from wine writers.

It wasn’t always so. In 1985, nobody had heard of the ancient wine-producing region, at least not in relation to quality wine. But Rene Barbier, along with his godson Alvaro Palacios and a few other twenty-something’s, saw a brilliant future in Priorat’s long-forgotten wine-glorious past.

Alvaro and the gang have proven their prescience; and their wines are justly prized and pricey. While the prices vary according to the perceived quality of the vintage, there have been some very good vintages of late.

2006 is powerful and rich, though 2004 may some day be viewed as better than 2005 and 2006, and all three are challenged by the excellence of 2001. No matter. Those four vintages are among the best ever seen in Priorat. 2001 is intense and becoming complex; 2004 is balanced and focused. 2005 and 2006 are more powerful in style and for many Priorat drinkers that should be reason enough to jump all over any of the great producers.

But don’t dawdle. The 2007 vintage doesn't have any of the cachet of 2005 and 2006. So these will disappear fairly quickly, as people decide to grab enough to last them for a year or two.

And the region doesn’t make a lot of wine. As crazy as it sounds, very little of the Priorat region is planted to wine, or at least currently tended by winegrowers; most of the hillsides betray abandoned vineyards. Growing winegrapes in Priorat is too difficult, and at the impossibly low yields typical of Priorat’s rugged vineyards, there’s no opportunity to make a reasonably priced commercial wine. Instead, a vigneron has to make a strong and powerful wine, worthy of the highest prices for wines sold in the US market. To do anything less will result in so-so wines that demand to be sold at those same crazy prices. It’s just too expensive to make wines in Priorat.

We'll see you Saturday and Happy Tasting,

Doug Frost, MS MW
Master Sommelier & Master of Wine