"What happened in Priorat couldn't happen anywhere else."

TarragonaThis is the story of the miracle of wine in Priorat, however. On May 2, 3, and 4, the starting gun is being held in Falset for the thirtieth edition of the Wine Fair, which will continue to organize tastings at the various wineries in Priorat throughout the month. The anniversary comes in a rather complicated context: wine consumption is declining—younger people aren't drinking—and the drought, which has passed but everyone is certain will return, has reduced the grape harvest by 35%. The only thing missing from this reality are US President Donald Trump's threats of tariffs, which will complicate wine exports to the United States, one of the countries that sends the most (and most expensive) wines to Priorat. However, thirty years after the first Falset Wine Fair, it is a good opportunity to look back and take stock. ARA has spoken with some of the people who, more than 30 years ago, believed the region had an unmissable opportunity and who bet everything on the vineyard, which can only thrive in this terrain of difficult slopes dominated by native slate. "What happened in Priorat couldn't happen anywhere else," says winemaker and viticulturist René Barbier, almost 40 years after acquiring his first estate in the region, of which he has nothing but love. "There is extraordinary intelligence in Priorat," he asserts.

At that first Wine Fair, in 1996, the Montsant DO didn't even exist (the wines from these vineyards belonged to the Tarragona DO), and the Priorat DO wasn't yet a qualified designation of origin (the distinction didn't come until 2000). Eleven wineries participated, some from the Priorat DO and others from the Tarragona Falset sub-zone, which is how the wines that today make up the Montsant DO were labeled. The fair was held in the Town Hall Square, as the then mayor of Falset, Jaume Domènech, recalls. "There were disagreements and some were very skeptical," he recalls. Some sensed that the region could once again thrive thanks to wine, just as it had for 800 years, from the arrival of the Carthusian monks from Escaladei in the 12th century until phylloxera destroyed almost everything at the end of the 19th century. But there was still a lot of work to be done. In fact, in the 1990s, despite there being only 20 small wineries in the entire region, almost all of Barcelona's wineries offered bulk wine at a good price from wooden casks on which the assurances, written in white plaster, that the product was from Priorat. "Everything was still to be done," Barbier assures.

From twenty wineries to one hundred and sixty

The initial twenty wineries have now grown to one hundred and sixty, and the eleven that participated in the modestly small first Wine Fair now number sixty. If we take into account the wineries that organize tastings throughout May, that's more than one hundred wineries involved in the fair. "When I look back at the conversations we had in the mid-nineties... we couldn't imagine what we have today. We weren't even close. We're much better off than we imagined in the first year of the fair," says Salustià Álvarez, current president of the DOQ Priorat and mayor of Porra at the time. However, the mayors and the wine industry believed in it and were able to pull together. "We were all heading in the same direction: we were clear that we had to create an agro-industry, plant vineyards, and open wineries," says Álvarez. From his point of view, there were two key moments: "The most important moments were when the Montsant DO was created and when the big wineries were convinced that Priorat was the region of red wine. And little by little, they started coming," he recalls. They did so with Codorniu and Freixenet, and above all, Torres, who symbolized the world of wine. "We planned everything and things kept coming together," he explains. He also considers the proposal to convert the Montsant mountain range into a wind farm to be essential: "That was an attack, and the entire region opposed it until Montsant ended up as a natural park," he explains. That regional unity, from his point of view, provided a new impetus.

For Barbier, this commitment to the region has also been fundamental to getting to this point. "We are where we are because we have all done our part," he says, also recalling the Falset School of Oenology: "They brought in all the winemakers we asked for," he recalls.

The fair grew year after year and maintained a balance between the general public and experts, such as sommeliers and specialized journalists. All the sources consulted emphasize that the fair's greatness is that the winemaker is behind the counter: "At very few fairs do you find the winemaker or the owner of the winery there. And almost all of them are there. It gives you goosebumps. They explain why they gave it that name, that label, the current mayor of Falset, Carlos Brull. The mayor also emphasizes that the region's winegrowers "love the land and the territory and want to preserve the agricultural landscape."

The little brother

At the fair, you can taste wines from the DOQ Priorat and the DO Montsant, the youngest designation of origin in Catalonia at twenty-four years old. "My winery was founded in 2003, and I remember going to the fair and opening my eyes wide open at seeing such established wineries," explains Pilar Just, president of the DO Montsant. "We were the little brother of a large DO next door, and all this spurred us to move forward, to make ourselves known, and to seek the identity that the DO Montsant has, with its own personality, distinct from its neighbor," she says. The drive of this little brother was fundamental for the wine sector and the region. "The majority of the DOs are small wineries, and you have to do everything: go to the vineyard, to the winery, to sell... It's impressive that in such a poor region, people go with their broken English to sell on the other side of the world... Yes, they do," she says proudly.

Where is the wine going?

The wine world, in Priorat and throughout Catalonia, has already endured various crises in just the twenty-five years since the beginning of the century: the financial crisis of 2008, the pandemic, another drop in sales in 2015, and the drought... and the current feeling is one of not knowing what will come in the near future. "We've overcome three crises, and the drought is the one that has hurt us the most," says Álvarez. To guarantee the future of wine in the region, the president of the DOQ Priorat points out that "wineries must return to making small investments, plant more vineyards (because with less water, more vineyards are needed to produce the same amount of grapes), and ensure access to water." He also insists that housing prices must be lowered to attract "educated young people" to settle in the region, as they will have to be the replacements. The threat of tariffs will complicate exports to the United States, but other markets have been sought for some time. "Exports must be fragmented, and we've been working with complementary markets for years," explains Just, citing China and South Korea as examples. Barbier, for his part, predicts that "there will be cultural wines, and the rest, and the first are the ones that will survive. The others have a harder time." Aside from this defense of quality, he offers a prescription that is well understood in the region: "Difficulties aren't resolved alone, they are resolved as a whole." Despite the uncertainty, the prestigious winemaker is optimistic: "Wine is the oldest thing in the world; it dates back 4,000 years before Christ. We won't run out of it!"