The first wine labels of Priorat
It doesn't seem so long ago when it was common to consider Priorat wines as low-grade, only serving to give alcohol content and body to other wines or, in the best of cases, for bulk consumption. A historically widespread idea outside our regions, although even here there were those who defended it as a fighting wine. But, in reality, the good reputation of Priorat wines is not relatively recent. In fact, the possibilities for retail sales, as well as exports of this generic designation, were already part of the business concerns of a good handful of entrepreneurs in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Officially registering the designation, especially for the retail market, would become the obsession of some producers and marketers of the time.
These pioneers found themselves in a desolate landscape. In 1893, there were 17,000 hectares of vineyards in Priorat, but with the arrival of phylloxera, hardly any survived. Despite this decline and the very slow recovery of vineyards in the region after the shock of the devastating plague, there was no shortage of businessmen with a determined commercial vision at the time.
To Ròmul Bosch i Alsina (1846-1923), the famous doctor, politician, shipowner, and businessman, we must attribute the first official registration of the name Priorato on a wine label. In 1894, Bosch i Alsina requested the trademark "Vino tinto garantido del PRIORATO RBA", aimed at the retail market. The industrial property of this trademark was granted to him in 1895. Curiously, the label bears two Stars of David, flanking the name.
Carlos Huyssen, a resident of Reus, is recorded as the second businessman to register the name Priorato on a wine label. He would do so in 1902 with the trademark "Saint-Raphaël. Vino auténtico del Priorato", which he would dedicate to exports. In 1903, the businessman Magí Pladellorens (Sant Martí de Provençals) joined as the third on the list with a label that mentioned the name Priorato. As a curiosity, for his part, Miquel Serra, from Lleida, would also register in 1903 one of the most improbable liquor brands we can find, "Anís Infernal", with a very prominent subtitle: "Fabricado con los peores vinos del Priorato". Literally.
The first Catalan version of the Priorat brand was registered in 1917. That year, Bonaventura Font Castany obtained the "First brand of wines in Priorat", accompanied by a design with grapes and vine leaves, as well as a jug of wine. The second registration in Catalan at the Office of Industrial Property did not appear until 1930, when industrialists Jaume Miralles Pallejà and Serapio García Sentis registered the brand "Bodegas Gran Priorat", with a winery at Carrer Còrsega, 267, in Barcelona. All these brands coexisted with a multitude of others that used the Priorat seal, but which had not gone through the process of official regulation; most circulated without any kind of registration. In fact, many of the companies producing these brands were not even officially registered.
I find it illustrative to comment that, as an argument reinforcing the good reputation that Priorat wine already had before the Civil War, in 1931 various entities and town councils in the region (Bellmunt, Gratallops, la Morera de Montsant, Poboleda, Porrera, Torroja del Priorat and la Vilella Alta) requested that the collective brand Priorat be recognized, "which shall serve as a guarantee for the wines of this region [...] and the creation of a Regulatory Council, following the example of that established for the Rioja brand, [...] under the name Priorato Scala Dei". This is because at the time the abuse by some foreign importers was very evident, who used the origin brands Tarragona, Málaga, Rioja and Priorat without any origin control. Brands, as we see, that already enjoyed international prestige. The declaration of the Priorat wine-growing designation of origin came in 1954.
The full and recognized fame of Priorat wines would not be seen until the beginning of the 21st century. The first steps were taken, however, at the beginning of the nineties of the 20th century, when at most a dozen wineries could be counted under the DO Priorat. At the beginning of the 21st century, we already have about fifty registered.
