Wine & Spirits - August 2019 - 35

and macabeo-abandoning the region's ancestral vine diversity. "Today Catalonia can be seen as a territory of whites,
but the truth is that, in the past, most of what was planted
were reds. Of the fifty-four grapes we have discovered, at least
ninety percent are reds," Torres adds.

ne of the few red varieties that survived postphylloxera is trepat. It's still included among the
grapes for Cava, and in light red wines, like the
Josep Foraster wines from Finca Mas Foraster in
Conca de Barberà. I met Ricard Foraster at the Julieta Vineyard, his three acres of old trepat vines that provide the fruit
for his wine of the same name. "The truth is, here in Conca,
we did not take the trepat very seriously," he tells me, "mainly
because it is a red grape that does not give much color, plus
it gives many kilos of grapes per plant. So, the usual fate was
to make rosés with it, either still or sparkling."
Foraster's vineyard sits at the foot of the Sierra de Miramar, catching the breezes that come down off the mountains.
The hills at the edge of the vineyard are covered in hundredyear-old pine trees, their conifer green contrasting with the
orange clay soils at their roots.
It was only a decade ago that growers like Foraster began
to consider trepat more closely. "For example, I didn't know
it was a vine with such a long maturity cycle. Since all the
grapes were used for rosé or for Cava, the harvests were
always early. But even if you wait for maturity, the alcohol
level is very low, always around twelve percent. And that's
what I like about it," Foraster says.
A low degree of alcohol, together with marked acidity
and very soft tannins, makes trepat an ideal wine to quench
thirst in summer. Foraster's Trepat Tinto was among the first
red wines from the variety to come to market, starting with

the 2009 vintage. The latest release is deliciously refreshing,
something like gamay, but with much more pungent acidity.
Then there's Julieta, where things turn more serious.
Foraster has been producing Julieta since 2011. The vines
are about 70 years old, yet he still has to manage their vigor
to lower their yields. In the winery, he extracts the juice very
carefully and then ages the wine in cement eggs for about
seven months before bottling. The result is a wine of delightful freshness, with a depth of flavor and texture that enchants
as it saturates the palate. "If I wanted to get a riper, more
alcoholic wine, it would be difficult. On the other hand, if I
want to achieve a 15-percent-alcohol cabernet in the Conca,
I can do it without problems," Foraster tells me, while we
both drink Julieta, completely forgetting about the spittoon
in front of us.

UNTIL RECENTLY,
GROWERS IN CONCA
DE BARBERA USED
TREPAT FOR
SPARKLING WINE
OR ROSÉ.

cross Barcelona to the east, Oriol Artigas has been
researching and recovering local varieties in Alella.
His La Prats vineyard was the starting point for
his project that now encompasses 25 acres divided
among ten sites scattered across the appellation. With them,
he produces 17 different wines. "Although I could have gone
to make wines outside of Alella or even outside Spain, I felt
that my job was to go through the towns here and rescue
what could be rescued," he tells me as we drive from one
vineyard to another, most of them perched in the mountains
on slopes facing the sea.
Along the way, the Port of Barcelona and the endless
industry on the coast is always in view. The city never seems
to end, even when you begin to see small patches of vineyards
in the middle of housing developments, office buildings and
factories. The expansion of Barcelona seems to have swallowed Alella, a DO with only 700 acres of vines-one of the
WINE & SPIRITS

AUGUST 2019

Wine & Spirits - August 2019

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