Winemaker Notes
Professional Ratings
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Robert Parker's Wine Advocate
The blend of the top-of-the-range and flagship red changes with the vintage. The 2014 Clos Mogador is 49% Garnacha, 25% Cariñena, 16% Syrah and 10% Cabernet Sauvignon from the vineyard that names the wine (and the winery), planted on llicorella slate soils at 350 meters in altitude. Eighty percent of the vines are 25 to 35 years old. It fermented with indigenous yeasts and had a 35- to 45-day maceration, followed by an élevage in 300-liter barrels and 2,000-liter foudres that lasted 18 months. They introduced oak foudres in 2011, which is the big change, and they use less and less barriques now. They are also using more and more Cariñena and Garnacha, but it depends on the vintage. All of the more recent wines have less tannins from the oak and less Cabernet Sauvignon, and they feel more elegant and balanced. There is great harmony on the palate, with very fine tannins and a velvety texture with great seriousness. This will develop at a very slow pace in bottle. They picked the grapes before the rains, and it's a concentrated year with nice extract but very good acidity. 31,000 bottles were filled in late June 2016.
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Wine & Spirits
Clos Mogador is an amphitheater of vines overlooking the Siurana River. The site was originally planted to garnacha and some cariñena more than 80 years ago. The Barbier family added syrah and cabernet when they arrived in the late seventies. This new vintage, a blend of all four varieties, is intense and profound, filled with ripe red cherry flavors and violet scents over a base of tense, tight tannins. This deserves at least ten years of aging.
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Wine Spectator
Lively and expressive, this red delivers ripe cherry and boysenberry flavors, backed by mountain herb, licorice and mineral notes. The rich texture is balanced by lively acidity and fine-grained tannins. There's plenty of stuffing, but the wine remains graceful and fresh. Grenache, Carignan, Syrah and Cabernet Sauvignon. Drink now through 2026. 2,100 cases made.
Beyond the usual suspects, there are hundreds of red grape varieties grown throughout the world. Some are indigenous specialties capable of producing excellent single varietal wines, while others are better suited for use as blending grapes. Each has its own distinct viticultural characteristics, as well as aroma and flavor profiles, offering much to be discovered by the curious wine lover. In particular, Portugal and Italy are known for having a multitude of unique varieties but they can really be found in any region.
Tiny and entirely composed of craggy, jagged and deeply terraced vineyards, Priorat is a Catalan wine-producing region that was virtually abandoned until the early 1990s. This Spanish wine's renaissance came with the arrival of one man, René Barbier, who recognized the region’s forgotten potential. He banded with five friends to create five “Clos” in the village of Gratallops. Their aim was to revive some of Priorat’s ancient Carignan vines, as well as plant new—mainly French—varieties. These winemakers were technically skilled, well-trained and locally inspired; not surprisingly their results were a far cry from the few rustic and overly fermented wines already produced.
This movement escalated Priorat’s popularity for a few reasons. Its new wines were modern and made with well-recognized varieties, namely old Carignan and Grenache blended with Syrah, Cabernet Sauvignon and Merlot. When the demand arrived, scarcity commanded higher prices and as the region discovered its new acclaim, investors came running from near and far. Within ten years, the area under vine practically doubled.
Priorat’s steep slopes of licorella (brown and black slate) and quartzite soils, protection from the cold winds of the Siera de Monstant and a lack of water, leading to incredibly low vine yields, all work together to make the region’s wines unique. While similar blends could and are produced elsewhere, the mineral essence and unprecedented concentration of a Priorat wine is unmistakable.