Winemaker Notes
Les Tosses is a steep, 90-year-old vineyard of head-pruned Carinyena on llicorella soil that Dominik Huber discovered while riding his motorbike on the twisting and mountainous dirt roads around Torroja. While many growers in the Priorat preferred Garnatxa or were planting Cabernet Sauvignon and Syrah, Dominik saw the potential for pure, old-vine, Carinyena. Inspired by the Burgundian concept of terroir, Les Tosses’ minuscule yields are not blended with any other variety or Carinyena from other sites. It is harvested by hand, with whole cluster native fermentations, infused rather than extracted, with only two weeks on the skins before pressing. It finishes fermentation and malo in a Stockinger foudre (50%) and a concrete tank (50%).
Professional Ratings
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Robert Parker's Wine Advocate
The pure Cariñena 2018 Les Tosses fermented in concrete with indigenous yeast, and half of the wine matured in oak foudre and the other half in concrete, as they are lowering the percentage of wine aged in oak. This is floral, aromatic and elegant, going back to the character of the 2016, when the wine almost felt like a Garnacha, fresh and elegant but also quite serious. It's nicely textured with the grainy mouthfeel from the slate soils, very tasty, clean and precise, and it finishes very long and dry. It might be a bit dizzy from the very recent bottling and should improve tremendously in bottle, as it has the balance and all the ingredients to do so. This should be long lived. It's quite compact, and this is a wine that always benefits from more time in the bottle, slowly revealing its Mediterranean character.
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Decanter
The next best thing to visiting the village of Torroja is to uncork this bottle. It may cost more than a budget flight to Barcelona, but it’s exceptional, a youthful wine already with such complexity. The palate is delicate, in contrast to many weighty Cariñenas. Finishes with a mocha note, and rich texture of tannin. Fresh but not too acidic; savoury, almost salty. The use of large old oak showcases the perfect fruit.
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James Suckling
Dark berry, flint and slate aromas with some gunpowder. It’s medium-bodied with firm, linear tannins that are fine-textured, long and energetic. Minerals and dark fruit on the palate. Blood orange, too. Drinkable now, but better in three or four years.
Responsible for some of the most stunning old vine red wine on the planet, Carignan has an amazing capacity to survive dry, arid climates and still produce lovely, mouthwatering wine. In Spain it goes by the name of Mazuelo or Cariñena and while it may have originated there in the province of Aragón, its popularity lies elsewhere, particularly in Languedoc-Roussillon. Somm Secret—Historically Carignan did not enjoy the respect that it does today. In the mid 20th century, Carignan covered nearly 140,000 ha in Algeria, where it was made into low quality bulk and blending wine to supply mass-market demand.
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.