Josep Grau: "It bothers me that DO Montsant is sold as the little brother of DOQ Priorat"

Barcelona/CapçanesI interview the producer Josep Grau (Barcelona, 1965) at Bar Milagros, where we taste two of his wines, the white Granit, made from white grenache, and the red La Florens, made from black grenache. We pair them with a dish of

You have been a white wine producer for years. Do you confirm that more are being sold now than ever before?

— I've noticed more interest in white wine, but Priorat is a region for reds. In the 70s and 80s of the last century, white grape vineyards were uprooted to plant red ones. And it's not at all to be criticized because the grape grower and the winemaker have to move to survive, to sell their grapes and wines. When you have it secured is when you can refine it. The fact is that white grape vineyards were uprooted and now they are needed. However, I repeat that DO Montsant and DOQ Priorat are lands of red wine, and importers ask us for reds, but if you have whites, they want them too. The same happens with other regions of the world: in Piedmont, we all expect to drink a red wine.

So why are you noticing this higher demand for white wine?

— Because the diet has changed and the way of enjoying wines has also changed. People between thirty and forty years old enter wine through whites, and not so much through a heavy, tannic red. They like fluidity, and I think the red wines that are being made are heading towards fluidity, towards the Burgundy style.

Say fluidity and not lightness, as I have sometimes heard it said.

— They are different words. I come from spending a few days in Burgundy, where I drank white wines with a lot of presence. All producers know that the market wants more refined wines, with more fruit. Despite this, wines must not only be fine, but also have substance. Whites must have crunchy substance.

You worked in the banking sector as a profession. When do you decide to make wine?

— I decided not long ago. First, what happened to me is that I went to a wine tasting when I was twenty-seven years old, in the back room of the Vila Viniteca delicatessen. The sommelier David Molina, who had worked with the chef Carme Ruscalleda, worked there. I remember that there were ten of us tasting wines, including the chef Montse Estruch. That tasting opened a door for me that led me to set a date in my life: at fifty years old, I proposed to change my life, leave banking and make wines.

Vila Viniteca is behind the great wine stories in our country.

— I would say that a large part of the success of Priorat is due to the relationship between Álvaro Palacios and Vila Viniteca. People with a great capacity for work met each other.

Pick up the thread of your twenty-seventh year.

— From that tasting, I did many others. I was an enthusiast. When I found a wine I liked, I would go see who made it. Then I found myself in two situations: the wineries I knew had a large-scale economic project behind them and the producers dedicated themselves to it because the winery was family-owned, and they were the fifth, sixth, or seventh generation making wine. I projected myself into it and realized that I was neither in the first nor the second situation.

Are you giving up?

— No. I enrolled in oenology in Vilafranca del Penedès, a course from Incavi. There I met many sons of wine merchants. I continued working in banking, and I juggled it with the course. And at the same time, something happened that I highlight: in 1993 I met the winemaker Enric Soler, who had a tasting workshop on Rambla de Catalunya, at the corner of Diputació. There I met with producers, I enrolled in specialized courses, we went to visit the region. I remember a visit to Priorat, with a stop for lunch at Hostal Sport in Falset. On this visit, I realized that wines can be made without having resources. I understood that in Priorat, in Montsant, wines can be made, and in 2003 I bought a vineyard in Capçanes. That same year I made my first wine, which did not fall under any designation of origin. The label was put on by my four-year-old daughter. I made three hundred bottles, in a house that was where they used to keep the mule. It had neither water nor electricity. That vineyard is where I now have the winery; it made me prove to myself that I could make a wine that I could drink.

From the milestone of 2003 we jump to 2013.

— In 2013, one of my wines, Vespres, made with Garnatxa Negra and Carinyena, received a high score in Wine & Spirits magazine. I was still juggling both jobs, but the North American importer advised me to dedicate myself exclusively to wine. By then, I was already spending my holidays harvesting grapes; I spent one day a week in Priorat. It all led me to set a personal deadline, my fiftieth birthday, and I've met it. I had been working in banking since I was nineteen, I had worked in the stock market, but my passion was wine. The day after I turned fifty, on February 3rd, my job was to make wine.

In the twenty-three years you have been making wines, you have managed to create eleven references.

— They have emerged, and I have been doing it with personal consistency. When I made La Florens, in 2014, I made it a single-varietal with Grenache. At that time there were no single-varietal Grenache wines, apart from those made by the Capçanes cooperative.

Why did you choose DO Montsant, which this year celebrates its twenty-fifth anniversary since its creation, in 2001?

— Because I understood that the soil of DO Montsant is much more interesting for the wines I wanted to make. They are lands that retain water more, and since I wanted to make fine, elegant garnachas, like those I had tasted in other parts of the world, then I decide to do it. I start working La Florens, 100% garnacha. In fact, even today 80% of the grapes I bring into the winery are garnacha.

You are one of the great defenders of DO Montsant.

— It bothers me that DO Montsant is sold as the little brother of DOQ Priorat. Traditionally, it has been thought that we are the cheap wines, close to DOQ Priorat. It is a mistake.

Let me tell you that I think you make very affordable wines for the great quality they have. I don't know if this happens in any other region in the world.

— When I decided the price I wanted to set for my wines, I thought that I was not known in the wine world. Therefore, my wines had to defend themselves. This fact is both good and bad at the same time, because I don't think about what they will say about me; I dedicate myself to fulfilling my dream. And I maintain that in the same vineyard with the same grape, the resulting wine is different because it depends on the hand and dedication of the winemakers.

You understand the craft like an artisan.

— Yes, I'm not interested in technology, and it's probably because I haven't studied the degree in oenology. I don't have any advisors, I have my own knowledge, from tastings, from trips, from the course I took in Vilafranca.

You had exported all the wines you made.

— Not anymore. Now I export 60%. One day an importer asked me to recommend a restaurant in Barcelona where he could taste my wines, and I realized there wasn't any. It couldn't be. In 2015 I reversed the percentage, so that 40% would stay in our country.

I'm picking up the thread of red wines. You make La Florens, el Pas de l’Estudiant, les Casetes, el Vespres. I repeat that they are very inexpensive red wines.

— You had exported all the wines you made.

If the La Florens wine were made in the DOQ Priorat, it would cost double the price it has now.

— Perhaps. And if it were from Burgundy, five times more. Despite this, I think that the designations of origin must assume different challenges than they had until now; there are wines that do not belong to them and are very good. The designations of origin must defend the territory; Montsant does. And currently I think we must work on enhancing the area's prestige, and try to delimit its production.

Finally, I ask you about the history of La Florens wine. How many bottles do you make?

— Twelve thousand. And when I made it, I tasted it, I found my mother inside. It had her fine, elegant character, full of personality, authoritarian too, that when you have it inside, you want more. When you listen to a song, maybe we think of someone. When I tasted La Florens, I found my mother in it. That's why I gave it that name: her name was Florentina.