🍴 Rural€
Lo Cupet 39
📍 la Vilella Alta
Small family restaurant in la Vilella Alta with home-style Priorat cooking, a small terrace, and good-value menus.
la Vilella Alta: what to see, where to eat and wineries
La Vilella Alta is one of the most authentic, almost untouched villages of the Priorat, on a hill by the Escaladei stream and ringed by the Montsant and Figuera mountains. It was founded in 1286 by the Carthusian monks of Escaladei, who relocated there the inhabitants of the now-vanished settlement of Montalt, and it prospered on wine until the 1884 phylloxera cut its population from around 600 to just over a hundred; today it still numbers around 130.
A walk through the village takes in the Carrer Major with its stone portals, loopholes cut into the walls during the Carlist wars — when the church served as a small fort — and the Font Vella and Font Àvia springs, now recreational spots crossed by the GR 7-4 trail. The 18th-century parish church of Santa Llúcia, neoclassical with baroque touches, has a choir attached to the bell tower and holds an old altarpiece. The cooperative winery, founded in 1933, offers arbequina olive-oil visits.
The village celebrates Santa Prisca on 18 January, its summer festival on the last weekend of July, and Santa Llúcia on 13 December.
Sources: ca.wikipedia.org · turismepriorat.org · vilellaalta.altanet.org
Photo: Xavigivax · CC BY-SA 4.0 · Wikimedia Commons
Restaurants
🍴 Café€
Lo Cafè
📍 la Vilella Alta
Café and social space in la Vilella Alta, serving as the village bar.
Wineries
Organic family winery
Bodegas Mas Alta
📍 la Vilella Alta
Mas Alta is a winery in la Vilella Alta founded in 1999 by two Belgian families with guidance from French oenologist Michel Tardieu, known for its certified organic viticulture and wines made from Garnacha and Cariñena.
Traditional Priorat wine
Celler Alcover i Jofre
📍 la Vilella Alta
A small family winery in la Vilella Alta that produced Fra Fulco, a highly rated red blend of Cariñena, Garnacha and Syrah, with production apparently ceasing around 2001.
Family winery, Priorat
Cellers Cartoixa de Montsalvat
📍 la Vilella Alta
A small family winery in la Vilella Alta farming six parcels on llicorella slate to produce Garnacha- and Cariñena-based wines recognized by critics such as Robert Parker.
Small, little-documented Priorat winery
Cellers Escoda Rivero
📍 la Vilella Alta
Escoda Rivero is a small winery in la Vilella Alta whose Prior Pons wines have received independent critical attention, though little else about the producer could be verified.
Family winery, artisanal wines
Noguerals
📍 la Vilella Alta
Noguerals is a small third-generation family winery founded in 1999 in Cornudella de Montsant, producing garnatxa, carinyena, cabernet sauvignon and syrah wines under both DO Montsant and DOQ Priorat from the Mas de l'Abella estate.
Red wine producer
Prior Pons
📍 la Vilella Alta
A winery in la Vilella Alta (DOQ Priorat) known for its Grenache-Carignan red wine, tasted and scored by international critics in 2013.
New-generation family winery
Ritme Celler
📍 la Vilella Alta
Ritme Celler is a family project founded in 2010 by Albert Jané who, after earlier ventures in Penedès and Montsant, settled in 2012 into a restored historic building in la Vilella Alta, where he farms close to 20 hectares of vineyard organically.
Founding estate, now Mas Alta
Vinyes Mas Romaní
📍 la Vilella Alta
Vinyes Mas Romaní was the original name, from 1999 until the mid-2000s, of the la Vilella Alta winery founded by the Belgian couple Michel and Christine Vanhoutte, today known as Mas Alta.