A great Garnacha in Montsant with German, Serbian, Portuguese and Andalusian touches

María Alvear is the one who will tell me, with her Andalusian accent (she says she still doesn't dare speak Catalan, and I tell her that the next time we talk, she'll have to), about the character of today's wine. "But... Alvear?" I ask her before starting. And she smiles and pretends to be, that it's from the Alvear family, owners of the Alvear winery (the oldest in Andalusia). "And what are you doing with the Terroir en el Límite winery?" I ask. She tells me that she works with Dominik Huber, its founder, out of personal conviction. "I met him," she tells me, "through Ana López Lidón," who is the export director at Gramona.

The German Dominik Huber, the father of the Terroir en el Límite winery, has already filled this page with wine. But today let's talk about his project in Montsant. He makes it with his partner, oenologist Tatjana Peceric, a Serbian who studied in Montpellier. And to round out the blend of international varieties, they have a two-year-old daughter named Filipa, in honor of the great Portuguese oenologist Filipa Pato.

A very gastronomic wine

Terroir en el Límite earned the coveted 100 Parker points with Les Manyes, 2016. It's a vineyard in the Montsant mountain range that remains a Priorat DO. Thanks to this vineyard, Dominik and Tatjana "discovered" Montsant, and this brings us to today's wine. In Montsant, they went looking for "interesting" vineyards, thinking that "geographically, it's a more open area." What we have in the glass today is 100% Garnacha, with very little intervention, complete authenticity. With more "infusion" than "extraction" and a lower alcohol content. In this DO, wines with lower alcohol content can be made, and therefore, if it's necessary to harvest earlier, because the year demands it, it's done. I would say that Dominik Huber is obsessed with wine but also with gastronomy. That's why he makes very, very gastronomic Mediterranean wines. To make this wine, they vinify the whole bunches for a week, with native yeasts, of course, and then age them in stainless steel. They don't go through casks. This way, you'll find all the fruit, without the touch of wood, with cherries, black fruit, and all the aromatic herbs you desire. We won't say it's reflected in the Burgundy way of making wine, because Montsant, today, is a mirror to the world, but we will say that the fruit, in the glass, dances and perfumes the air.

Priorat and Montsant, these days of spring, the rainiest we can remember in years, are beautiful. The vines with tender leaves, the figs, this bluish-gray, on impossible margins, the pools full of water... But today's wine is from 2023; one of the drought years. It's worth enjoying this fresh wonder while thinking about that difficult harvest. Enjoy this Garnacha, which expresses itself here, wild and pure, extremely elegant, airy, and light as a sigh. Don't miss it.