El Mas de L'AAlfredo Arribas is that rare figure who is able to move between two very distinct worlds – those of architecture and winegrowing. Alfredo is a multi-disciplinary architect who has a body of work spanning the globe. During the 1990s, the modern style of Catalan wine was surging in production and popularity. Like many others, Alfredo caught the wine bug. Choosing to focus his efforts in his native Catalonia, he bought property in Priorat in 2001 and has been exploring the region’s diverse micro-climates with a variety of wine projects ever since. With El Mas de L’A, Alfredo honed in on La Morera de Montsant as a place to make a style of Priorat more focused on finesse than the concentrated wines the region has been known for. Located in the most northerly section of Priorat a few kilometers from Escaladei, where the 12th century Carthusian priory was established and gives name to the region, La Morera is one of the oldest villages in Priorat and sits at the highest elevation in the area at 743 meters. It neighbors the distinguished winemaking villages of Cornudella (Montsant) and Poboleda (Priorat), and its vineyards sit below the town between 500-550 meters elevation. Here you have a diversity of soil types – quartz, sand, schist, clay, granite and limestone all play a role - with less influence of the famed broken black slate llicorella that predominates in the region. Knowing that the sun-loving Garnacha likes to grow in a variety of soils, Alfredo co-planted 5 hectares of the entire spectrum of the grape’s colors – Negra, Peluda, Blanca, Gris, etc. along with the other indigenous grape varieties Carinyena and Trepat. Co-planting vineyards is becoming a widely accepted method of dealing with the roller coaster of climate change: different grapes perform differently based on what a particular year’s weather conditions give. This allows Alfredo to have a quality grape harvest year over year, enabling him to assess the differences of what each variety gives in any given vintage. While some would say that this discipline looks to the future, grape growers took a similar approach of co-planting in the past, long before the creation of the many modern regulatory bodies which currently promote monovarietal winemaking. What’s old is new again. El Mas De L’A farming is currently organic in transition to biodynamic. In the cellar, Alfredo works with minimal interventions – native yeast, whole-bunch, infusion-style vinifications and minimal sulfur addition in mostly stainless steel and large format wooden vessels. He strives to make “fine wines with low alcohol content and silky tannins,” with a particular focus on producing world class white wines which will serve as reference points for this storied region going forward. Once described as an architect who “connects creativity and nature”, we have no doubt Alfredo is doing the same with wine, and his hunch about La Morera is paying off. From world class whites to vibrant claretes and finely detailed reds, El Mas de L’A is rendering a new and dynamic face of Priorat. The Wines
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