Catalonia, Spain

Photograph: Mattes Renã/gettyimages. Maps: Maggie Nelson
TRAVEL: CATALONIA
Six of the best bodegas to visit
★ Mas Rodó,
★ Orto Vins, El Masroig
A 30ha estate in upper Penedès bought
by the Sala family in 2004, with a
bodega featuring prize-winning
architecture. No cava, but remarkable
still whites and meaty reds. Visits by
appointment. www.masrodo.com
A venture set up in 2008 by four
friends, each owning vines in prime
Montsant sites. Selecció Orto are the
entry-level wines, combining grapes
from all four partners; Les Singularitats
del Orto are single-vineyard wines. By
appointment. Tel: +34 629 171 246
★ Cava Recaredo,
★ Vinyes Domènech, Capçanes
Family-owned estate producing
legendary, long-aged, vintage Brut
Nature cava from old, low-yielding
vines, all estate-owned and farmed
biodynamically. Visits by appointment.
www.recaredo.es
Schedule a visit and allow Juan Ignasi
Domènech to express his passion for
this exceptional vineyard. The estate’s
gems are Furvus (old-vine Garnatxa
and Merlot) and Teijar (100% Garnatxa,
just 4,000 bottles a year produced).
www.vinyesdomenech.com
★ Capafons-Ossó, Falset
★ Celler Bàrbara Forés, Gandesa
The Capafons family has excelled with
its Priorat and Montsant wines since
the 1980s – a decade before Priorat
shot to fame. Arrange a visit so they
can take you on a 4x4 tour of the
vineyard, followed by a tasting.
www.capafons-osso.com
Carmen Ferrer, great-granddaughter
of Bàrbara Forés, runs this 22ha family
Terra Alta estate with husband Manuel
Sanmartín. Elegant, lightly oaked white
(El Quintà) plus single-vineyard red
blends (Coma d’en Pou and El Templari).
www.cellerbarbarafores.com
Sant Joan de Mediona
The Decanter travel guide to
Catalonia, Spain
FACT FILE
Planted area 56,000
hectares
Main grapes
White Chardonnay,
Macabeu, Xarel-lo
Red Carinyena, Garnatxa
Negra, Merlot
Production 335 million
hectolitres in 2010
Main soil type Calcareous
In the dramatic wine regions of
Penedès, Priorat and Montsant,
Sue Style finds plenty to tempt
her away from the buzz of the
regional capital, Barcelona
LITTLE WONDER THAT Barcelona has long featured
among Europe’s top 10 favourite short-break
destinations. A city of elegant avenues and mazes of
medieval streets, world-class museums and
modernista architecture, a vibrant food and wine
scene, and beaches right at the end of Las Ramblas,
it has enough to keep the most insatiable visitor
busy for days.
But if you’re planning a visit to Barcelona any
time soon, consider breaking out for a little wine
tourism. Just beyond the confines of Catalonia’s
capital there’s a world of rolling vineyards, all of
them easily accessible from the city.
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A good place to start is Penedès, a large wine
region to the west of the city, its dusty, sun-baked
vineyards flanked by the dramatic, saw-toothed
Montserrat mountain range, soothed by cooling
breezes from the Mediterranean – and perpetually
threatened by the encroaching industrial sprawl.
This is the home of cava, the celebrated Catalan
fizz that has made the name of Penedès. The big
cellars like Freixenet and Codorníu are geared up
for wine tourism; but even more rewarding are
small-scale producers such as Recaredo who work
with gnarled, old, low-yielding vines and age their
wines well beyond the prescribed nine-month norm
for cava (10 years for their fabled single-vineyard
Turó d’en Mota).
Beyond cava
But there’s more to Penedès than sparkling wine: the
most famous estate (and non-cava producer) is
Torres, whose celebrated vineyards Mas La Plana, Mas
Borras and Fransola are all located here. Meanwhile
in the higher-altitude vineyards to the north around
Sant Sadurní d’Anoia
Top: the dramatic,
saw-toothed Montserrat
mountain range looms over
Penedès, the home of cava
Above: visitors are
welcome at the big cava
houses like Freixenet,
where bottles are still
riddled by hand (left)
Sant Quintí de Mediona, which once lay on the border
between Christian and Moorish Spain, Mas Rodó
makes elegant still wines from cool-climate white
grapes and international red varieties.
Proceeding in a westerly direction from the
upper Penedès, country roads fringed with wild
fennel lead through limestone hills where
vineyards alternate with Mediterranean scrub,
olive groves and stunted pine forests. Here, in the
neighbouring region of Conca de Barberà, you can
hook up with the Ruta del Cister, which links three
fine 12th-century Cistercian monasteries: Santes
Creus, Valbona de les Monges and, most magnificent
of all, Poblet, the southernmost on the route which
still houses a contemplative community. Close by is
Milmanda, a striking fortified castle now owned by
Torres (open to visitors, by appointment); between
the two lies the fabled vineyard of Grans Muralles.
From Conca de Barberà it’s a short trip south as
the crow flies – but a challenging, giddying drive ➢
How to get there
By plane to Barcelona
about 1.5 hours direct
from major UK airports,
then a 40-minute drive by
car to Penedès
By train to Barcelona
the new AVE (high-speed
train) from France will be
operational in 2012
D E C A N T E R • J a nu a r y 2012 | 93
TRAVEL: CATALONIA
&DWDORQLD
WHERE TO STAY, SHOP, EAT AND RELAX
Gourmet regional food, stylish accommodation, culture and history
Above: Cava, Catalonia’s
celebrated fizz, has made
the name of Penedès
HOTELS
Cal Mestre
without fretting about the drive
down. www.siuranaella.com
region’s best. Modest mark-ups.
www.cellerdelaspic.com
Hotel les Capçades
Restaurant U
Stone-built, 13-room country hotel
in the heart of Terra Alta, close to
the hilltop village of Horta de Sant
Joan where Picasso came for a few
days and stayed nine months.
www.hotelcapcades.com
Explore Penedès from this friendly
B&B in a 16th-century stone house
in Les Gunyoles, with views over
the vines and distant Montserrat.
www.cal-mestre.com
Can Bonastre Resort
‘It’s a short trip south as the
crow flies – but a challenging,
giddying drive in the lee of the
Sierra de Montsant – to Falset’
in the lee of the Sierra de Montsant – to Falset,
capital of the county of Priorat. This is the nerve
centre for Montsant and Priorat wine appellations,
with good restaurants, small hotels, B&Bs and a
lively Fira del Ví held every May which includes a
range of fringe events in the surrounding villages.
The doughnut, the jam and the rest
Priorat – one of only two wine regions in Spain to
enjoy DOQ status (Denominació d’Origen
Qualificada, in Catalan) – is often described as the
jam in Montsant’s encircling doughnut. This is
tough, uncompromising country whose
precariously perched villages are reached by
vertiginous roads. It offers rich pickings for lovers of
highly concentrated, mineral-laden red wines,
grown in Priorat’s unique, chocolate-brown,
quartzite-speckled slate (llicorella) on longneglected, steep terraces that were resurrected in
the 1990s and propelled to world notoriety by a
band of visionary wine growers. Deep pockets are a
prerequisite here: Priorat’s cult wines are some of
the priciest in Spain.
Descending from the dizzying heights of Priorat,
you’ll find that Montsant is altogether more
accessible, both price-wise and in terms of its
landscape. Here the vineyards are a lot less steep
and more spread out, its wine growers less grand
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Luxurious 12-room hotel complex
surrounded by vineyards, worth a
visit for the excellent-value tasting
menu and vinotherapy massage
with views across to Montserrat.
www.canbonastre.com
Above: Castillo de
Milmanda in Conca de
Barberà, owned by Torres
Above right: producers
worth visiting include Cava
Recaredo, Celler Bàrbara
Forés and Vinyes Domènech
Stylish country hotel hidden in a
sunny Priorat valley, close to
Domènech bodega and vineyards
(see box, p93). www.grupolhh.com
Mas Figueres
Simple, warmly welcoming B&B
near Falset, well placed for Priorat,
with great Catalan breakfasts and
evening meal to order (ask for
Quima’s truita de patates – potato
omelette). www.masfigueres.com
Hotel La Siuranella (& RESTAURANTS
Restaurant Els Tallers) Cal Blay Vinticinc
Atmospheric restaurant housed in
a revamped modernista building in
cava capital Sant Sadurní, with
vaulted ceilings, cava-lined walls
and well priced pica-pica (tapasstyle) menus. www.calblay.com
Left: Picasso’s ‘Olive press
in Horta de Sant Joan’ – he
loved the Terra Alta village
and stiff. Some of the most rewarding wineries to
visit here are young, recently formed partnerships
such as Orto Vins in El Masroig (with winemaking
in El Molar), whose winemaker worked for Alvario
Palacios at his celebrated Priorat bodega for 17 years.
Finally, edging ever westwards across the River
Ebro, you reach Terra Alta, a gently undulating land
of vines, olives, fruit trees, almonds and hazelnuts.
Though the name of this wine region hints at great
heights, most of its vineyards are situated at around
500 metres – high enough to give the Garnatxa
Blanca that thrives here (70% of the world’s total
plantation of this variety are found in Terra Alta) a
fresh, expressive minerality that is lacking in the
lower, warmer regions. Just beyond the town of
Gandesa, where Bàrbara Forés produces some
exceedingly fine Garnatxa Blanca, is a beautiful
hilltop village now known as Horta de Sant Joan,
where you can settle down for a couple of days’ rest
and restoration. You’ll be in good company: Picasso
came here in 1898 and fell in love with the place.
Writing of his time spent there, he famously
observed: ‘Tot el que sé, ho he après a Orta’
(‘Everything I know, I learnt in Orta’). D
La Heredad Mas Collet
Below: relax and unwind
with a vinotherapy
massage at the Can
Bonastre Wine Resort
Book dinner and a bed at this tiny
hotel perched on a rocky outcrop
on the edge of the Montsant region
so you can sample chef Pau
Escriu’s neo-Catalan cuisine
El Celler de l’Aspic
Barrel-vaulted restaurant next
door to the Falset coop, a favourite
haunt of local wine growers who
come for Toni Bru’s superb cuisine
and a wine list that showcases the
A hidden jewel of a restaurant in
Les Gunyoles that’s a must for
Raimón Olivella’s inventive cooking
and encyclopaedic, keenly priced
wine list. www.u-restaurant.com
SHOPS
Aguiló
Falset wine boutique specialising
in Montsant, Priorat and local olive
oils. www.aguilovinateria.com
Vins I Licors Grau
High-class wine supermarket in
Palafrugell with huge range of
Spanish and international wines.
www.grauonline.com
TOURIST TRAIL
Batalla del Ebre
A museum project in and around
Corbera d’Ebre that illustrates the
horror of the Battle of the Ebro, the
bloodiest in the Spanish Civil War.
www.batallaebre.org
Miguel Torres
Visitors’ Centre
A total wine experience, including
a train tour through the Mas la
Plana vineyard, wine and brandy
tastings and cooking classes. Visits
to Castillo de Milmanda (home of
Milmanda and Grans Muralles) or
the Priorat bodega also possible by
appointment. www.torres.es
Sue Style writes on
wine, food and travel
and divides her time
between Alsace
and Catalunya
www.suestyle.com
Ruta del Cister
A route through three counties
focusing on the superb 12th-century
Cistercian monasteries of Poblet,
Santes Creus and Vallbona de les
Monges. www.larutadelcister.info
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