From Muller, from Tarragona to Reus

In 1851, at the age of twenty-two, Augusto de Muller y Ruinart de Brimont (1829-1893) arrived in Tarragona from Reims. Belonging to a prominent winemaking family from Alsace, De Muller sought an area in Spain untouched by the phylloxera plague, where he focused his activities on the production and export of wines. The volume of his international sales, with branches in Bordeaux and London, made him the leading businessman in Tarragona during his time, a city where, for much of the first third of the 20th century, the wine trade was the main economic driver, overshadowed by other, far less significant, activities. The port of Tarragona became De Muller's export hub.

The patriarch of the De Muller family was also instrumental in establishing the Carthusian monastery of Grande Chartreuse in Tarragona in 1882. He ceded the former Fabril Tarraconense (a spinning and weaving factory, inactive since 1869) to them, where they would produce the liqueur. Augusto de Muller contributed to other patronage endeavors, many of them linked to the Church. In business, alongside the wine sector, De Muller also acted as an importer and distributor of Sicilian sulfur, created a passenger line connecting Tarragona with Buenos Aires, and attempted to venture into the railway industry.

With the incorporation of his son, Josep Maria de Muller i Patxot (1861-1920), into the company, it began exporting to the United States, China, India, and Southeast Asia. According to the company's accounts, more than 250 million liters were exported by the end of the 1920s. What truly catapulted De Muller to fame were its sweet and altar wines, thanks to the distinctions awarded by the Vatican, which made the Tarragona-based firm the papal supplier of altar wine, a privilege granted by Pius X and renewed by successive papacies until that of John XXIII, at which point it was transferred to private brands. The industrial vocation of the De Muller family—popularly known as "the winery on Calle Real"—was manifested in their investment in highly significant technical advances for the time, such as the installation in 1928 of the first industrial cold storage facility in Spain, primarily for wines. The loss of the Vatican privilege in the 1960s did not diminish production, as the commercial networks established by De Muller were maintained, ensuring that the altar wine produced in Tarragona remained available throughout much of the world for decades to come. In the last third of the 20th century, the company experienced a series of insurmountable difficulties, leading to its filing for bankruptcy in 1993. In the document submitted to the court, De Muller SA emphasized its cash flow problems, the lack of demand, and the wine crisis. It also cited the viability of payments to suppliers as guarantees for its recovery, secured by the family's art collection and its shareholdings in Saint-Galmier (a mother-of-pearl button company) and Vinos Solé y Cía., based in Constantí, among other assets.

Pere Martorell Aguiló (1932-2025), a businessman from Reus and one of the great entrepreneurs of the second half of the 20th century, negotiated the acquisition of the company with the De Muller family. He first convened a meeting of all the shareholders to explain his offer; the meeting was held at the Metropol Theater, with over a hundred shareholders in attendance. Martorell would pay the family a sum of money and then lift the suspension of payments in court (the company's debts amounted to approximately 200 million pesetas). Thus, in June 1995, Martorell, who had already built a winery in Reus in 1994 on the Mas Valls estate, acquired all the assets of De Muller SA and, in 1996, began moving the casks and some of the machinery from Real de Tarragona Street to the new location. The sale of the Tarragona warehouses provided the new owner with the financial resources to complete the acquisition. At the same time, Martorell Aguiló acquired the Reus-based vermouth brand Iris from brothers Albert and Antoni Cochs, a historic label that was going through a difficult period. De Muller, owned by the Martorell family, produces other wines under the Tarragonès and Priorat designations of origin. Currently, the company produces two million liters annually, 30% of which is vermouth, and an even more significant portion is its altar wine, sold under the De Muller label. The winery is currently managed by Pere Martorell García.