Jaume Balaguer: I was working as a computer engineer in a multinational company, and one day I left everything to work in the world of wine.

GratallopsI am interviewing Jaume Balaguer (Gratallops, 1971) at his family shop in Gratallops, the Bon Viure wine shop. He has just been proclaimed president of the DOQ Priorat after the death of Salus Álvarez, and he will be in office for a year and a half, because elections will be called then. Jaume had been working at the Regulatory Council for seven years in different working groups, and years ago he had run for president in a different candidacy from Salus Álvarez's, although over time they worked together.

You have replaced Salus Álvarez without elections being held.

— No, we haven't done it because we had a governing committee made up of six people, who were the ones who decided who should replace him. I wanted it to be someone else, and I said so, but they called me, and they told me it had to be me. I can't say who that other person was. The fact is that I have accepted it, but with a series of conditions.

Which ones?

— I have said that the DOQ Priorat is very broad, there is a lot of talent, and I want it to be there. I want more young people, more farmers, more talent to enter the DOQ Priorat. I think we haven't known how to do it until now, I include myself, but now all this has to change. I am 54 years old, I am of a certain age, but there are many young people in the territory, a youth that is coming up behind us, who I would like to see integrated into working groups. We must open the base because we cannot afford to lose talent. 

How many wineries are within the DOQ Priorat?

— The last figure I have is 118. Maybe one more or one less, because recently one closed in Torroja because the relatives did not want to continue with it. The figure is quite stable because we are not a designation of origin where wineries want to leave and go on their own.

You were working until now in the promotion commission. Do you think more advertising than ever is needed for the current sales figures of wine in general?

— Yes, and we have started to do so. Until recently we had never supported wineries to go to fairs, and now we do. It was a request that several wineries made to us, because if the appellation of origin asks us for help, it will always have more strength to obtain it than if they do it alone. To the point. We are present at Barcelona Wine Week, we financially support wineries so that they are at the stands, and at the last one there were already thirty-four.

In Priorat, are you noticing what is called the wine crisis?

— Of course. There is more wine than water in the world. It's a wine and alcohol crisis. In Germany, beer consumption has fallen by 30%. Why? It is said to be the trend of healthy living, which has demonized alcohol, but I think the reason is economic. Being able to go to a restaurant and order a bottle of wine requires an economic situation. Young people, perhaps up to thirty years old, cannot do it. And then I also emphasize another reason: we are a country that drinks a lot of foreign wines, which are not among our twelve designations of origin. It is not normal for a country to drink more foreign wine than it produces, especially when they are wines of such high quality as ours. It is a pleasure to be able to drink a Conca de Barberà, a Penedès, a Montsant, a Priorat, of course.

Have you set yourself the goal of drinking more Priorat wine in Catalonia? 

— We must all achieve that more Catalan wine is drunk. If more Catalan wine is drunk, then, statistically, Priorat will also be drunk. All designations of origin must row together to achieve this. I must also say that when I started, sixteen years ago, the landscape was different. From then until now we have managed to make Catalan wine gain ground.

In Priorat, wineries export a large percentage of their production.

— There are wineries that export 60%, others 90%. The moment we are living in is not easy, there is a global wine crisis, and we have to work hard to get through it. There are wineries that have also seen product diversification as a way out.

You say you started sixteen years ago. How did you decide to work at the family winery of Gratallops, Balaguer and Cabré?

— I worked as a computer engineer, in data protection, for a multinational company. One day I woke up in London, because I traveled constantly, and I asked myself what I was doing there. I decided to take a sabbatical year and, after a month, I was already working at the company Euroselecció, which at that time was dedicated to exporting wines. I stayed there for three years, and my father told me that he needed me at the family winery. The first thing I did was convince my father that we didn't need any distributors, that we had to do it ourselves. At that time, my father made 2,000 bottles and, due to the volume, I told him that I would take care of it.

And how did it go?

— I went to talk with other wineries so that we could distribute our wines together. Three from Priorat, one from Montsant, and another from Conca de Barberà. Instead of going alone, I told them that I would be a shared salesperson and explain the range of wines I carried. And that's how I started. First in our domestic scope, and then the wineries told me to go into the international market. And I did that too.

What volume of bottles do you have in your cellar now?

— We went from two thousand to twelve thousand bottles. I started making white wine. We are the only winery that makes all wines with monovarietal garnachas. The white, with white garnacha.

The wineries say that whites are the ones that sell the most currently.

— They are the ones who are best adapting to the times we are living in. The world of wine has always followed trends. When we started in Priorat, people were clear that they wanted to make an international wine, so they brought in varieties from outside, oenologists from outside, and when they saw that the prescriber Robert Parker was crazy about wood, then we Parkerized the wines. However, the second revolution in Priorat was in 2000, when we stopped making wines that Robert Parker liked, when we got to know ourselves. Then we made wines that express the territory.

Did you stop using wood?

— Yes, but that's not the point. The fact is there's been a big change: we've understood that the land must speak to us through our wines. I'll give you the example of Mas de la Rosa, where Vall Llach and Torres work, and now the Peyri family too. Well, at Mas de la Rosa, the vineyard is telling us what it's like, it's making us aware of a territory we didn't know. In other words, we're making wines that, instead of wood, have people who have interpreted what the vineyard is like.

The DO Penedès has become the first in the world to be ecological. There was a time when the DOQ Priorat seemed like it could be too.

— There are wineries that do not see that being organic is a value. My own father tells me to do it when the winery is solely my responsibility. Organic or biodynamic viticulture must be done out of conviction.

I'm asking you about the Arrels del Priorat project, which your father started together with René Barbier to recover rancid wine.

— It all started with a dinner between the two of them. They were worried because they thought the stale wine was being lost, and they began to ask for mothers from different houses in the region to have a base. Now we have thirty, sixty, and one hundred year old ones, all made with mothers from families that preserve them.

What production do they do?

— Forty-six bottles of 375 milliliters. Fortified wine is experiencing a good moment, not in large production volumes, but in good positioning in restaurants.

Finally, last Friday the Priorat wineries paid tribute to Salus Álvarez. Will the Regulatory Council also do so?

— We will do it with a project that explains the evolution of Priorat and that I cannot explain. His death has been a hard blow for the workers, for the territory. Meanwhile, my most immediate challenge is to achieve greater participation from wineries, from young people, in the Regulatory Council.