Priorat is a wild and beautiful place. The hilltop villages adrift between deep valleys evoke Barolo and Brunello. Soil lies exposed on the steep, dry slopes, and the diversity of colour on show is remarkable. On the fertile valley floor it can be a shocking brick red. Upslope you can see beige, chocolate, white and the blue-grey of the iconic, layered licorella slate-and-quartz soils.
Jean Belondrade hadn't been planning to make wine here. He was doing very nicely making white wines in Rueda (an altogether different part of Spain), thank you very much. But when a friend dragged him to the old, abandoned vineyard of Clos de l'Afeitador, he found the site as compelling as it was in need of repair. Terraces were collapsing, the vines hadn't been pruned for years, the site was overrun with wild olive trees. It took Jean and his team four years of arduous work to recondition the site. But why did they do it? Jean had spotted the sheer potential of the site.
The natural amphitheatre shape of the vineyard is ideal for quality viticulture. In such a hot, bright area, the north-facing orientation is a blessing. It's a steep slope with a height difference of 83 metres top to bottom, and very diverse soils, from clay at the bottom, via limestone on the mid-slope, to licorella on the upper slopes. The slope is planted to a mix of old-vine Carinyena (aka Carignan) on the lower slopes and Garnatxa (Garnacha, aka Grenache) on the upper slopes. Jean christened his Priorat 'NerinTerra'. The newly released 2020 is the third vintage, and the best so far, remarkable for the elegant, cool complexity with which it expresses the plum and dark flower aromatics. Jean admits that he still has no idea how NerinTerra will age in the long term, but it very clearly has all the structural elements in place for an impressive aging trajectory.
We'll be showing 2020 NerinTerra alongside some other mountain Grenache-based wines tomorrow, in our Copthall Avenue store. Wines will be open from noon to 6pm. Hope to see you there! /NT
