Priorat and Álvaro Palacios. How five friends brought a forgotten region back to life.

A rugged corner of Catalonia

Priorat lies in Catalonia, about two hours' drive southwest of Barcelona and then inland, where the landscape turns steep, rocky and wild. Olive trees, wild herbs and terraced vines share the hills, and the light is extraordinary: the region counts some 4,300 hours of sunshine a year. Monks were the first to recognize its potential, and the monastery of Scala Dei still stands as a reminder of those beginnings.

The defining feature is the soil. Vines grow in a dark brown to black slate called llicorella, poor in organic matter but able to hold rainwater so that old roots can push down five, ten meters or more. Yields are tiny, sometimes as low as ten hectoliters per hectare, which makes the wines concentrated and the work hard to pay for.

From abandonment to rebirth

Priorat was once an important wine area, but phylloxera, two world wars, the Spanish Civil War and the Franco years left the vineyards neglected for most of the 20th century. At the end of the 1980s a group of friends, often described as hippies who drove around in a pink bus, set out to revive it. René Barbier was among them, and Álvaro Palacios was the youngest, nicknamed 'the dolphin'. That nickname became the name of his first vineyard, Finca Dofí.

The film shows how they shared everything at first. Their 1989 wine was made as one wine in a single cellar in Gratallops and then bottled under different labels, to the amusement of the group when critics described them as different wines. Find out how that cooperative spirit grew into one of Spain's most exciting red wine regions, now ranked as a DOCa, the highest tier of Spanish appellations.

Garnacha and Cariñena

Garnacha is the heart of everything Álvaro does. It is the quintessential Mediterranean grape, sometimes called the Pinot Noir of the South: often around 15% alcohol yet surprisingly delicate, with modest color and tannin but bright acidity and a stony freshness. Cariñena is its opposite, rich in color and firm tannins, and for centuries growers here have used it to give structure when Garnacha needs support.

In the episode Álvaro explains why he returned to these traditional grapes rather than international varieties, and why he plants new vineyards as bush vines on free slopes, the way it was done in the old days.

L'Ermita and the price of perfection

Álvaro's most famous wine comes from L'Ermita, a small, steep site of very old Garnacha vines below a hilltop hermitage. Its first vintage, 1993, made only around 1,500 bottles and caused a shock: a young wine that became the most expensive in Spain, at a time when the priciest Spanish wines were usually the oldest. Before 2006 it included a little Cabernet Sauvignon; today it is pure Garnacha.

Watch how the harvest at such a site turns into a daily exercise in tasting, testing and touching the grapes, with picking done before midday, several rounds of sorting and a portion of ripe stems added back for grip. As Álvaro puts it, with a single vineyard there is no blend to hide your mistakes.

A family story

Behind the wine is a family drama. Álvaro grew up in his family's winery in Alfaro, in the east of Rioja, studied in Bordeaux and worked at Château Pétrus before choosing Priorat over home. See how his father eventually came to recognize what he had built, and how, after his father's death, Álvaro returned to run the family winery as well, dividing his time between the two regions.

He also speaks about the next generation and about the idea that vineyards like L'Ermita belong to the heritage of Priorat, Catalonia and the world, with each grower simply passing through.

Go furtherWant to taste along? Find Álvaro Palacios’s wines and where to buy them near you on Wine-Searcher.