Internationally, Catalan wines have taken a quantum leap, particularly the full-bodied Priorat red wines, which taste and aroma are unlike any wine you might have tasted. Other appellations such as Montsant, Tarragona or Penedès, our champagne producing region, are following suit. The Catalonia wine country is bursting with contagious creativity and pride for work well done. This wine guide features Mediterranean grapes, types of wines, the vineyard landscape, the Mediterranean wine history, the savoir-faire, and almost devotion of many men and women that are passionate about wine making and convey their passion to every bottle of wine. On the island of Majorca real state pressure is huge. Nonetheless, you have admirable family and mountain wineries refusing to bow to easy money. They found inspiration in the Priorat town of Porrera, and became the architects of the revaluation of Majorcan wines. Wine, like cuisine, and everything that arises from the heart of nature that we measure with our senses, wants people with a religious calling. What's even more exciting is the incorporation of traditional grape varieties like premsal blanc into the new quality Majorcan wines. They are also working to save the malvasia of Banyalbufar a local varietal that produced a very appreciated sweet wine, which takes this wine guide to the dessert wine topic. My childhood is full of memories of my grandmother sitting with her guests, delicately holding a small glass of muscat, or ratafia, a traditional sweet wine you make with herbs and green walnuts on the waning May moon. After being neglected for years, quality dessert wines are beginning to get again the attention they deserve. Wine country terroir or holistic wine makingGreeks from Asia Minor taught us the art of wine making more than twenty-four centuries ago. Since then the wine universe has been united to Catalonia, its history, landscape, Mediterranean food and cuisine, culture, economy, and joie de vivre. As the Catalan medieval writer Francesc Eiximenis already advised in his unique medieval wine guide on how to drink and eat properly: Drinking moderate amounts of wine gives joy to man. Indeed, Mediterranean wine has an ancient tradition that became very well established with the Romans. Thanks to this solidity, the Mediterranean wine culture managed to survive the devastating 19th-century attack of the phylloxera, which killed most grapevines. The concept of wine terroir now extensively promoted by the French and many a wine guide means to take into account all natural and human factors that play a role in wine making. In the Catalan small wine making town of Porrera, they have always been aware of the fact that wine making is a philosophy, a holistic process that no wine guide had mentioned until now. If you want to understand wine, you can never isolate it from its human and natural environment. The final bottle of wine is an integral part of a wider wine universe that permeates whole Mediterranean towns and wine countries, and embellishes their landscape with beautiful vineyards. Nowhere is the philosophy of wine as unmistakable as in the Western Mediterranean region. The triad wheat, oil and wine have nourished the Mediterranean peoples since time immemorial. Likewise, they have created and shaped the Mediterranean lifestyle and culture since ancient times. Poets sing their praises of the breathtaking beauty of vineyards like the final stanza of Josep M. de Sagarra's poem
| Top | Mediterranean diet recipes home |
|
