Celler de l'Abadia is a family project started by Antoni Basté i Garriga, one of the so-called “pioneers of Priorat” and a close friend of René Barbier, founder of Clos Mogador. Antoni took part in the region's wine revival in the late 1980s, bottling his first wine, Clos Basté Krug, in 1989, before putting the project on hold in 1990 for family reasons.
In 1998 Antoni picked the project back up and, on René Barbier's advice, bought 11 hectares of vineyard in Gratallops. His son Jeroni joined in 2003 and expanded the estate to 15 hectares planted with traditional Priorat varieties. The winery was formally established in 2004, taking its name from the stream running around the vineyard, known to villagers as the “Torrent de l'Abadia.” Today Antoni still runs the project, Jeroni is the winemaker (trained at the Jaume Siurana Oenology School in Falset), Jim designs the wine labels, and Julien and Alice help promote the wines across Europe and internationally.
The vineyard stretches between Gratallops -the cradle of Priorat- and El Lloar, facing the Montsant valley, on the region's characteristic terraced llicorella (slate) soil, with about 60 metres of elevation change and just over 35,000 vines. Grenache, Carignan, Syrah and Cabernet Sauvignon grow in the sunniest section, used for the wines Sant Jeroni Garnatxa de l'Hort, Sant Jeroni Carinyena del Forn, Alice and Clos Clara; the cooler, north-facing section is planted with Pedro Ximénez, Viognier and Roussanne, the base for the white Sant Jeroni Pedro Ximénez Blanc de l'Aubada. Vineyard work is done entirely by hand with a minimal-intervention approach and no chemical products, and the estate also has around fifty olive trees over 300 years old, which supply its own olive oil.
Imatge: Juan Emilio Prades Bel · CC BY-SA 4.0 · Wikimedia Commons
Sources: web.archive.org · web.archive.org · web.archive.org