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PRIORAT
“My encounter”
In southern Catalunya, there lies a formidable plateau. Rising up from the arid landscape, Montsant’s jagged edge seems to hold the sky in place. Not a cloud in sight and the sun is hot. The heat eminatimg from the ground in intricate waves almost invisible to the eye. The mirages dance before me. I am standing on a terraced hillside with Apollo and his chariot riding my back. The hundred year vines interlace their broad leaves with my fingers. This is Priorat. As I look out across the ancient rock bed, I can only think of serenity. I move my hand from the miniature forest to the swelling grapes just beneath it. “Taste it!” I hear. “This is Grenache” says Carles Pastrana, the familial owner of Clos de l’Obac winery. It’s the end of august and these little globes of nectar will soon be picked. Life in Priorat can be difficult for an old grape vine. Cold winters, fluctuating springs, and hot summers. I ask Carles how the vines do in the dry weather and he responds with a penetrating stare and slight grin. He beckons me with his finger as he squats down to where his hands meet the earth. As he scoops up a handful of loose rock, a fine red sand slips between his thick knuckles, and he whispers “magic.” By now a small cloud has formed at his feet and I waft in a splendor of unknown earthly scents. “This is Licorella!” He exclaims proudly. “A secret of Priorat. It feels warm. The texture. It is alive with energy.” Carles hands me a small slab of volcanic slate. He continues, “Montsant is our protector, the red clay and from the earth has a symbiotic relationship with the slate from the mountain.” This is why the terroir is so important to the structure and flavor profile of the grapes. As I learned that day, during the colder months, the slate rock helps the roots of the vines stay warm and in the warmer months the clay holds tight to moisture which helps feed the plants. Welcome to this wonderful world, my encounter with Priorat.
Jonathan Treibatch Director METTA Spirits
SPIRITS
Pastrana - Jarque Family
At the end of the 1970s, the married couple Pastrana & Jarque (Clos de l’Obac), together with a friend of those times, René Barbier (Clos Mogador) – the son of a family of Tarragona wine merchants–, began to replant vines in El Priorat with the aim to produce some great wines there. Over a period of more than ten years, their project aroused little interest among wine professionals and did not win the trust of financial and governmental institutions because of its great ambition, its geographical location, its promoters’ inadequate economic resources and the limited winemaking knowledge of almost all those engaged in the venture. Despite these shortcomings, however, in the ten-year period 1979-1989, this group finally succeeded in achieving and even surpassing the initial goal. At the beginning of the 1980s the team was joined by the chemist Toni Basté (Clos Basté Krug), a Catalan living in Strasbourg. He was soon followed by Fernando Garcia (Clos Setién), a wine importer in Frankfurt, and by the biologist and director of the Enology Section of the Falset Vocational Training School, Josep L. Pérez (Clos Martinet), in 1986. These five people, together with a resident of Gratallops, Antonio Rosario (Clos Ballesteros Jové), who worked for them as a farmer, formed the whole project’s core until 1987, when it was superseded by the founding of an agricultural company that was joined by Adrian Garsed (Clos Garsed) from England and Luc Van Iseghem (Clos dels Llops) from Flanders, who were wine merchants of London and Ostend, respectively. In 1989 and 1990, before the first wine was bottled, Daphne Glorian (Clos Erasmus) from Switzerland and Álvaro Palacios from La Rioja (Clos Dofí) also joined the project, although they never came to form part of the company.
In 1993, the World Wine Guide, considered Clos de l’Obac as a one of the top 150 wines of the world.
Towards the close of the 1970s, the married couple formed by the Tarragona journalist Carles Pastrana and the Barcelona enologist Mariona Jarque embarked on their life adventure, devoting their professional and family future to the project of recovering the wines of El Priorat and of making their wines internationally known. Thirty years later, together with their two children, Guillem and Iona –who represent the essential future of this story–, they have consolidated a project that is now known and acknowledged around the world. DOQ PRIORAT In 1979 Carles Pastrana and Mariona Jarque recovered the family winemaking tradition and started off on a long adventure aimed to rescue the old Carthusian wines in the heart of the lands that were once under the dominion of the priors of Scala Dei, a monastery located in the Catalan region of El Priorat. Carles and Mariona created the properties of Clos de l’Obac and Miserere, replanting vines along the banks of the river Siurana in the southern pre-coastal area of Catalonia, and established the Clos de l’Obac Winery.
METTA.SPIRITS
CLOS DE L’OBAC
MISERERE
Characteristics:
Characteristics:
The strength of Clos de l ’Obac.
The elegance of Miserere
Power, structure and complexity are the three characteristics that define this wine. They are the result of the different orientations and altitudes of the seven vineyards sited around Gratallops Village where the fruit for this wine grows.
Miserere Wine characteristics are based on an ensemble of more than 40 years old vines.
Gratallops
• Red wine.Vintage wine • Region: Priorat • Designation of Origin: Priorat • Vineyards: Winery is the owner of all vineyards where the fruits come. • Surface: 30 hectares • Harvest: By hand, in 20 kilos boxes. • Production: Controlled temperature fermentation and long maceration. • Aging: New French oak barrels.
The five varieties that compose this wine provide a great balance between the strength and the fineness.
Percentages:
35% GRENACHE 35% CABERNET SAUVIGNON 10% SYRAH 10% MERLOT 10% CARIÑENA
To pair with:
Red meat and game.
Torroja del Priorat (Founded 1271) • Red wine. Vintage wine • Region: Priorat • Designation of Origin: Priorat • Vineyards: Winery is the owner of all vineyards where the fruits come. • Surface: 80 hectares • Harvest: By hand, in 20 kilos boxes. • Production: Controlled temperature fermentation and long maceration. • Aging: New French oak barrels.
It is an honor to be able to produce one of the wines with more elegance in the international wine market, all of that without renouncing the great structure and the power that the real Priorat wines have.
Percentages::
27% GRENACHE 27% CABERNET SAUVIGNON 26% TEMPRANILLO 10% MERLOT 10% CARIÑENA
To pair with:
Red meat and monkfish casserole.
KY RIE
DOLÇ DE L’OBAC
Characteristics:
Characteristics:
White Wine • Vintage white wine • Region: Priorat • Designation of Origin: Priorat • Vineyards: Winery is the owner of all vineyards where the fruits comes • Surface: 1 hectare • Harvest: By hand, in 20 kilos boxes. • Production: Controlled temperature fermentation in French oak barrels • Aging: New French oak barrels. • Limited production: 1400 bot.of 750 ml.
The fineness of Kyrie The optimum maturation of the four varieties used to produce this white wine, together with a soft maceration gives to the wine a great structure and complexity that allows finding in it an exquisite fineness and elegance. Vintage white wine, aged during 6 months in new French oak barrels, process that provides great expectative of longevity with an exceptional evolution in the bottle that lasts years.
Percentages:
Dessert wine
• Vintage red dessert wine. • Region: Priorat. • Designation of Origin: Priorat. • Vineyards: Winery is the owner of all vineyards where the fruits come. • Surface: 1.05 hectares. • Harvest: By hand, in 20 kilos boxes. • Production: Controlled temperature fermentation in oak barrels and long maceration. • Aging: New French oak barrels. • Limited production: 3000 bot. of 500 ml.
The sweetness of Dolç de l ’Obac There wasn’t any written reference in Priorat about elaborating a vintage wine with residual sugar originated from a proper over maturation and by a sudden stopping fermentation. El Camp dels Espills is a small property sited at the bottom of Abadia’s ravine. This peculiar settlement permits the grapes over maturation without botrytis. Harvesting Dolç de l’Obac grapes is a slow and laborious work due to fruit brittleness that has been carefully raisined.
35% GRENACHE 30% MACABEU 30% XAREL·LO 5% MUSCAT OF ALEXANDRIA
Percentages::
To pair with:
To pair with:
Smoked fish, seafood and fish.
80% GRENACHE 10% CABERNET SAUVIGNON 10% SYRAH
Cheese, foie gras and dark chocolate.
SPIRITS
LOVE IT? To confirm your interest in Clos de L’Obac and our wines, please our wines, do not hesitate to contact us!
Email: members@mettamanagement.com
Phone: 310.569.4996
METTA.SPIRITS