Costers del Priorat is a winery founded in the early 2000s in Bellmunt del Priorat by a group of winemakers and entrepreneurs with long experience in the wine trade, who brought in oenologist Josep Mas Barberà to lead production. The winery is housed in a 15th-century Carthusian farmhouse, with an old threshing floor, an underground cellar converted into an ageing room with French oak barrels and clay amphorae, and a "bottle cemetery."
The vineyards, scattered across small terraced parcels of llicorella (slate) soil in several Priorat villages -including Bellmunt del Priorat (the Sant Martí estate), Torroja del Priorat (Mas Alser) and el Molar (Les Solanes)-, include old vines of Grenache and Carignan (samsó) between 40 and 100 years old, worked by hand and with animal traction due to the steep terrain, following organic farming practices. The winery's philosophy favors elegance and finesse over the power traditionally associated with Priorat, using spontaneous fermentation with native yeasts and ageing in a variety of vessels (barrels, amphora, cement, foudres).
Notable wines include Pissarres (the entry-level blend sourced from several estates), Rocafosca and Rocafosca Blanc, the skin-contact Blanc de Closos, the single-vineyard Clos Alzina and Clos Cypres, and the Memòries vi ranci. The winery offers guided tasting visits -at different levels depending on duration and food pairing- through the threshing floor, cellar, ageing room and bottle cemetery.
Imatge: costersdelpriorat.com
Sources: costersdelpriorat.com · demaisonselections.com · enoguia.cat