Celler Vall Llach was founded in the early 1990s in Porrera, one of the nine villages of DOQ Priorat, through the partnership of singer-songwriter Lluís Llach — who had inherited his mother's house and land in the village — and notary Enric Costa. The first vintage was produced in 1998 and reached the market in 2000. After Enric Costa's death in 2013, his son Albert Costa, an agricultural engineer and oenologist with winemaking experience in Australia, New Zealand, and Napa Valley, took over as head winemaker and is today the majority owner.
The winery farms around 65 hectares of vines planted at some of the highest points in Priorat, on the region's characteristic slate soil known as llicorella, and produces an average of about 100,000 bottles a year. The wine is still made in the same building on the village square so that local residents do not have to travel elsewhere. Its philosophy rests on rigour, quality, and respect for the land, with controlled microproduction by individual plots (trossos) that puts quality ahead of volume.
Notable wines include Mas de la Rosa (Gran Vinya Classificada), made exclusively from grapes grown on a single steep vineyard; Porrera Vi de Vila, based on century-old Carignan vines blended with Grenache; Embruix, the winery's most popular wine, made from Carignan, Grenache, Cabernet Sauvignon, Merlot, and Syrah grown on younger vines; and Aigua de Llum, a very limited-production white made with Viognier and other local varieties. The winery offers guided visits at its Porrera premises.
Imatge: Merdaseca · CC BY-SA 4.0 · Wikimedia Commons
Sources: vallllach.com · vallllach.com · grapecollective.com