2011  La Conreria d’Scala Dei, Les Notes Iugiter, Priorat

The Wine: Indicative blend: Garnatxa negra, Samsó (Carignan) and Cabernet Sauvignon. intense, dark plum and rich, jammy fruit aromas combined with notes of cassis and tobacco. rich and smooth with juicy fruit on the palate, plenty of mineral seasoning and rounded with silky tannins.  The wine is aged for 14 months in Allier French oak barrels and followed by another 18 months of rest in the bottle.  Drink now-2025.

WE: Despite showing some heat and raisiny character up front, this compact Priorat smells schisty and Port-like in the best way. A full-bodied, wall-to-wall palate manages to stay smooth, while this tastes not only of ripe blackberry and dark plum, but also of Priorat’s minerally soils. A silky feel cuddles complex flavors of dark fruits and hot stones on a fine finish.

The Winery:  Read about this winery at: http://www.vinslaconreria.com/index.php/10-english/39-home

 CV Members Rating

View full evaluation here: 212 Summary of Tasting Scores

Best Rated Wine: 2017 Bodegas Raul Perez,  Ultreia, St. Jacques, Mencía, Bierzo

Best Buy: 2017 Bodegas Raul Perez,  Ultreia, St. Jacques, Mencía, Bierzo

Technical Notes 

Summary notes about the regions included in this tasting

Maps Author: Té y kriptonita – Own work, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=6641680

 Bierzo

The Bierzo is a Spanish Denominación de Origen (DO) for wines located in the northwest of the province of León (Castile and León, Spain) and covers about 3,000 km². It borders on the provinces of Ourense, Lugo and Asturias in the north and in the south on areas of La Montaña, la Cabrera and La Meseta, in Léon.  The first written reference to the Bierzo region, whose name derives from the pre-Roman city of Bergidum, is from Pliny the Elder. The Romans developed agriculture, introduced new crops including Vitis vinifera vines, and new technology such as the Roman plough. However, the greatest expansion of viticulture was related to the growth of the monasteries, especially the Cistercian order, during the Middle Ages. After centuries of production and after having achieved a good reputation in the markets of Galicia and Asturias, the Bierzo vineyards suffered a terrible blow in the 19th century when the phylloxera plague practically wiped them out. There was a severe economic crisis which forced many people to emigrate. Production was slowly re-established thanks to the technique of grafting onto new world root stocks and wine production gradually recovered to assume the significant economic role it had played in the past. In 1989 the Bierzo Denominación de Origen was officially recognized.

The wines produced under the Bierzo DO must be made only with the varieties that are authorized by the Consejo Regulador (Regulatory Council).

• Red grapes: Mencia, Alicante Bouschet (Garnacha Tintorera), (experimental: Tempranillo, Merlot, Cabernet Sauvignon)
• White grapes: Doña Blanca, Godello, Palomino, (experimental: Malvasía, Chardonnay, Gewürztraminer)

The Bierzo is a land of many things. It is a place of passage of the Camino de Santiago, which makes its last stop through these lands before crossing to Galicia. It is a place of mining, a trade that comes from ancient, as the incredible Roman mines of the Marrows, which are World Heritage Sites. It’s a land of chestnuts, maybe the best in Spain. And it’s a land of wine. To say wine for these lioness lands is to say Mencía. A grape considered until very recently as inferior. Along with the Tempranillo, Grenache, Bobal and Monastrell it is one of the five majority varieties of the native Spanish red grape.

As with Grenache or Monastrell,the Mencía grape has long been relegated. But fortunately for our palates, the time has come to rediscover it. And as is often the matter, the problem was not with the grape, but of how to treat it.

The Romans introduced the cultivation of vines in this area. Later, during the Middle Ages, Cistercian monks spread their cultivation throughout much of the region. But beyond growing the grapes in the area, Bierzo’s wines were not valued. They were held for rough table wines.

The best grapes grow on the slopes of the Bercian sun. In that Appellation of Origin, a new generation of young winemakers ignored the Mencías growing vigorously in the fertile Sil Valley and preferred instead those growing in the harsh mountains of the Bercian basin (now known as the wine belt of El Bierzo). As with wine, the strains that grow in the most difficult conditions are the most sought after.The centuries-old hillside vines that were still scattered here and there and the slate soils were the ideal raw materials material of a new generation of modern and quality wines. These were vines plated at relatively high altitude, with little water and low yield that unknown until then, with an extraordinary aging capacity and evolution.

Alvaro Palacios soon joined this generation of new winemakers”. As he had done with the resurgence of Priorat, in Catalonia, he thought that this area had much potential to exploit its wines in a more delicate and professional way. There he installed in 1999 the winery “Descendientes de J. Palacios”, in which you can find wines such as the popular Pétalos del Bierzo, which in 2014 was rated by Robert Parker as the best wine in Spain for its value for money. Another example is the Corullon. Located in a higher price range, it is a wine of power and energy, but a lot of freshness, it is what is given in the mouth.

High quality wines. Usually, the wines of this Mencía produced in the surrounding mountains, which is how it began to be produced in Roman times, are light and fresh. His key is on the ground. Unlike the grapes grown until then in the fertile Bierzo Valley, they grow in poor soils, on slopes located at altitudes of around 800 meters.

Jumilla 

(Taken from wine-searcher.com) 

Jumilla is a wine DO title of Murcia, a small region on the Mediterranean coast of southeastern Spain. The Jumilla viticultural area, which is sandwiched between Yecla in the north and Bullas in the south, is considered to be Murcia’s most important in terms of quantity and quality. It is also the region’s oldest, established in 1966.

Like other wine regions of the area, Jumilla specializes in wines based on the Monastrell grape variety, which accounts for around 80 percent of vines. It is well suited to the harsh conditions here, and the best wines demonstrate a varied flavor profile. This includes lively fruits and earth and mineral notes when young, developing into complex aromas of matured fruit, coffee and oak spices with extended barrel aging.

Since the 1990s, when the region’s potential to produce quality wines came to the fore, Jumilla has attracted a lot of outside attention. Producers from other Spanish regions as well as foreign companies have set up wineries here.

As a result, plantings of varieties such as Syrah, Cabernet Sauvignon and Merlot have steadily increased, mainly to add body and character to the Monastrell-based reds. This blending approach has worked wonders for the status of the region’s wines. It is now seen as a benchmark among similar styles produced in this part of the country.

A Jumilla Monastell red wine must include at least 80 percent of the named variety. The same rule applies to Jumilla Monastrell rosé. Jumilla Dulce (sweet wine) may be produced in all three colors.

The landscape of Jumilla is characterized by wide valleys and plains, interrupted by the serrania (mountain ranges) that cross Murcia between the sea and the Meseta Central (central plateau) of Spain. Hot, dry and harsh is the best way to describe the zone. Despite these seemingly adverse conditions, vines have been grown here since Roman times, when the region had quite a reputation for its full-bodied red wines.

The wine industry in Jumilla received a big boost when the phylloxera plague struck neighboring France in the late 19th Century. This resulted in demand for Jumilla wine soaring. Despite escaping the major outbreak, Jumilla was struck down by the pest in 1989. This offered the DO a chance to modernize and refocus on lighter, more elegant wines.

Jumilla’s climate is best described as arid and continental, more in line with the Castilla-La Mancha areas to its west than any significant influences of the Mediterranean  although in the eastern fringes it is more transitional. Summer temperatures of 40°C (104°F) are not uncommon here. This, along with the scant rainfall, makes the region a theoretically harsh grape growing area.

There are two main factors that act as saving graces. Firstly, there is a healthy amount of lime in the soil, which helps in retaining vital moisture, and secondly, the elevated central plateau. Elevations range between 400 and 800 meters (1300ft – 2600ft), providing some respite from the intense heat. Nevertheless, frosts, violent storms and torrential rains still pose real threats to vines.

The Priory’s Región – Priorat

The Priory region (or Priorat) is located in the province of Catalonia in the northeast of Spain and about 150 kilometers southwest of Barcelona.  Its name comes from the original settlement of Carthusian monks in the 12th century in the area.  Since then, grapes have been grown in the region.

The region is almost surrounded by the Montsant Mountains and its topography is characterized by steep and steep slopes and arid and rocky soils where the mechanization of the crop is impossible.  However, the monks’ thirst for wine led them to cultivate the vines on hand-carved terraces in the mountains with great effort and hard work.  To this day the cultivation and harvesting of grapes is manual.  The age of the vineyards and the aridity of the soils result in very low yields of only two-thirds of a tonne per hectare (the average elsewhere is between 2.5 and 3.5 tonnes).  The intense summer heats in the Mediterranean produce wines with high alcoholic content (a potential of up to 18 per cent).  Low yields and mode of production result in intense, high-concentration and relatively expensive wines.

The Phylloxera wiped out many of the region’s vineyards at the end of the 19th century and many growers left the region and its vineyards.  But in the 1970s young wine industrialists led by René Barbier (Clos Mogador and Freixenet) and Alvaro Palacios (Finca Dofi,L’Ermita) attracted by the potential of the region brought French winemaking methods and began the replanting and reconstruction of the old vineyards.  The result has been an almost miraculous resurgence of the region that today is in the major world leagues with its best wines.

The Soils.Poor, stony soils of volcanic originwith a base of quartz and slates.  Slates produce mica residues that reflect the sun and retain heat (high sugar concentration in the grape).  Aridity forces vines to produce deep roots in search of water nutrients and minerals.

Climate.There are an abundance of microclimates that vary with altitude but are determined by the icy winds of the north (mitigated in part by the Montsant mountains) and by the warm winds of the east.  Summers are long, hot and dry(35o C) and very cold winters (-4oC)

The Varieties The traditional varieties were Grenache and Carignan that continue to be the most important (suitable for production of wines type Cotes du Rhone).  New entrepreneurs have planted Cabernet Sauvignon, Merlot, Pinot Noir and Syrah to produce blended wines

Today there are more than 50 reputable cellars in the region.  The wines are usually aged in French oak barrels, must have an alcoholic strength of at least 13.5 percent and are strong and concentrated.

Montsant 

(Taken from wine-searcher.com) Montsant is a wine region in Catalonia, northern Spain. The gently undulating area was formerly categorized as a viticultural sub-zone of Tarragona, but local growers felt the high-altitude vineyards here earned the region recognition as a DO in their own right. As a result, the Montsant DO was created in 2001, its name taken from the Montsant massif (‘holy mountain’) that dominates the region’s landscape.

Montsant lies west of Tarragona city and forms a ‘C’ shape that almost completely surrounds the prestigious Priorat region. Vines were first introduced to the area by the Romans thousands of years ago, and Catholic monks continued the viticultural tradition during the Middle Ages. By the 19th Century, wines from Montsant were receiving praise at universal exhibitions.

Montsant’s most prized vineyards are located in terraces on steeply sloping sites, often interspersed with pine, almond and olive trees (the region is also known for its excellent olive oils). Here, the vines benefit from intense Mediterranean sunshine during the day and relatively cool temperatures at night. This high diurnal temperature variation assists in the development of complex aromas in the grapes, while preserving vital acidity. The soil is a local specialty known as ‘llicorella‘, which is high in granite and slate components. Together, these growing conditions result in the region’s wines being concentrated and expressive of the local terroir. The average altitude of the zone is 1180ft (360m) above sea level, rising steadily in the northwest and southeast as it approaches the Montsant and Montsalt mountains respectively.

Montsant has earned a reputation for its high-quality red wines, particularly those based on old Garnacha and Carinena (Carignan) vines. Ull de Llebre (Tempranillo), Spain’s darling, and international varieties such as Cabernet Sauvignon, Merlot and Syrah also perform very well here. Most red wines are typically intended for aging and exhibit velvety textures even after a short time in oak. The old vines offer particularly complex examples.

A small quantity of white wine (based on Chardonnay, Macabeo and Garnacha Blanca) is produced, along with rosados (rosé) wines and dessert wines, for which the region was once famous. These Vi Ranci (old wines) are made in an oxidative style and are then fortified. Some mistelas (mistelle), made from grape juice and added alcohol, are also produced. Kosher wines from the area can also be found.

Praise for Montsant’s high-quality wines is getting louder as the international market realizes the region’s potential.