Priorat: History of Catalonia’s Reborn Wine Region

Priorat is the story of a wine region that died and was reborn. Hidden in the rugged mountains of Catalonia, on hillsides of black slate too steep and poor for almost any other crop, it was one of Spain’s greatest wine names in the Middle Ages, then all but abandoned after disaster struck in the nineteenth century. Then, in 1989, a handful of visionaries arrived to resurrect it — and within a decade turned this forgotten backwater into the source of some of the most coveted and expensive red wines in Spain. This is how Priorat rose from the dead.

The priory in the mountains

Priorat owes its very name to the Church. In the twelfth century, Carthusian monks founded the monastery of Scala Dei — “the ladder of God” — in these mountains, and the prior who governed the surrounding villages gave the district its name: Priorat, the “priory.”¹ The monks planted vines on the steep slate slopes, and for centuries the region’s dark, potent wines were prized across Catalonia and beyond.

The land they chose was extraordinary. The hillsides are made of llicorella, a black, crumbly slate shot through with glittering quartz, that forces vine roots to burrow deep in search of water and gives the wine an unmistakable mineral intensity. For as long as anyone farmed it well, Priorat made wine of rare concentration — but farming it at all was brutally hard work.

Decline and abandonment

Disaster came at the end of the nineteenth century. The phylloxera louse reached Catalonia in the 1890s and destroyed Priorat’s vineyards, and unlike richer regions the isolated, impoverished district never fully recovered.² With the vines dead and no work to be had, families drained away to the cities through the twentieth century, and the terraced hillsides that monks and peasants had built over 700 years slid slowly back toward wilderness.

By the 1980s Priorat was one of the poorest and emptiest corners of Catalonia, its population a fraction of what it had once been. A few old growers clung on, tending ancient, gnarled Garnacha and Cariñena vines that had survived on the slopes — a buried treasure that almost no one, for the moment, recognised.

The 1989 revolution

The rescue came from a small band of believers led by René Barbier, who saw in Priorat’s old vines and slate soils the makings of a world-class region.³ Around him he gathered a now-legendary group — among them the young Álvaro Palacios, Daphne Glorian, Josep Lluís Pérez, and Carles Pastrana — who settled in the village of Gratallops and, sharing a single cellar, made their first joint vintage in 1989.

Their wines, released under a family of “Clos” labels — Clos Mogador, Clos Erasmus, Clos Martinet, Clos de l’Obac, and Clos Dofí among them — landed like a thunderclap. Dense, mineral, and profound, they were unlike anything Spain was making, and critics and collectors seized on them. In the space of a few vintages, a depopulated mountain village became one of the most talked-about addresses in the wine world, and a wave of new growers followed the pioneers up into the hills.

Llicorella and the taste of slate

What makes Priorat unrepeatable is the marriage of old vines and poor stone. The ancient Garnacha and Cariñena vines yield only a handful of tiny, intense bunches each, and their roots reach deep into the fractured llicorella slate for water and minerals.⁴ The result is a red of remarkable power and concentration — dark, warm, and structured, with a stony, almost smoky mineral streak that growers and drinkers describe simply as the taste of the slate itself.

Farming it remains punishing. The terraces are too steep for machines, so much of the work is still done by hand or with mules, and yields are among the lowest in Spain. That scarcity, built into the very landscape, is part of why Priorat’s finest wines command the prices they do.

L’Ermita and the summit

No wine captured Priorat’s ascent more than L’Ermita, the single-vineyard Garnacha that Álvaro Palacios made from a steep parcel of ancient vines — a wine that became one of the most expensive and sought-after in all of Spain.⁵ It proved that this once-forgotten region could stand alongside the greatest names in the world.

Recognition followed. In 2000, Priorat was awarded Catalonia’s highest classification, the Denominació d’Origen Qualificada (DOQ) — the equivalent of Spain’s top DOCa rank, which it shares with Rioja alone. From a dying village to the very peak of Spanish wine in barely a decade, Priorat’s revival stands as one of the most dramatic comebacks in the history of wine.

Montsant: the ring around Priorat

Priorat does not stand alone. It is completely encircled by another region, Montsant, which won its own DO in 2001 and shares much of Priorat’s character — old-vine Garnacha and Cariñena grown on slate and granite, making dark, generous reds.³ Long overshadowed by its famous neighbour, Montsant has become one of Spain’s smartest sources of value, offering something of the Priorat experience at a far gentler price, and drawing many of the same ambitious young growers.

Together the two regions form one of Catalonia’s great red-wine landscapes, a rugged amphitheatre of terraced hills where the difference between a merely very good bottle and a legendary one can come down to a single slope of slate.

Mapping the slate: the new hierarchy

As Priorat matured, its growers turned from simply proving the region great to understanding it in fine detail. Inspired by Burgundy, the region built a pyramid of terroir classifications — from village wines (Vi de Vila) up through named sites and classified single vineyards — to put the specific origin of each wine on the label.⁵ It was a recognition that, on these slopes, one hillside can taste profoundly different from the next.

That obsession with place has defined Priorat’s second generation. Where the pioneers of 1989 set out to prove the region could make great wine at all, their successors now map its every terrace and old vine — ensuring that the slate’s ancient character is preserved, understood, and passed on.

Beyond the reds: whites and a revived village

Priorat is famous for its dark reds, but the slate makes fine whites too. From old Garnatxa Blanca (white Grenache) and Macabeu vines come rich, textured, mineral whites that are increasingly prized, a lesser-known facet of a region still mostly defined by its power.⁴ They are proof that llicorella’s gift for concentration is not limited to red grapes alone.

Perhaps the most moving part of Priorat’s story is human. Villages such as Gratallops, which had emptied out over the twentieth century, have come back to life — new wineries, returning families, and wine tourists have brought work and pride to a district that a generation ago seemed destined to vanish. In reviving the vineyards, the pioneers of 1989 revived a whole way of life, and today Priorat stands not just as a great wine region but as a rare example of the countryside winning its people back.

Keep exploring Spanish wine

• Rioja Wine: The Complete History — the only other region to share Spain’s top classification.
• Cava & Penedès — Priorat’s Catalan neighbour and its sparkling heartland.
• Spanish Wine: The Complete History — the national story Priorat belongs to.

Frequently asked questions

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To go deeper, these books make excellent companions:

The Oxford Companion to Wine

Jancis Robinson & Julia Harding

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The World Atlas of Wine

Hugh Johnson & Jancis Robinson

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The New Spain

John Radford

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References & further reading

1. Jancis Robinson & Julia Harding (eds.), The Oxford Companion to Wine, 4th ed. (Oxford University Press, 2015), s.v. “Priorat,” “llicorella,” and “Catalonia.” ↩
2. John Radford, The New Spain: A Complete Guide to Contemporary Spanish Wine (Mitchell Beazley, 2004), on phylloxera and the decline of Priorat. ↩
3. Sarah Jane Evans MW, The Wines of Northern Spain (Infinite Ideas Classic Wine Library, 2018), on René Barbier and the 1989 revival. ↩
4. Jancis Robinson, Julia Harding & José Vouillamoz, Wine Grapes (Allen Lane / Ecco, 2012), on old-vine Garnacha and Cariñena. ↩
5. Consell Regulador de la DOQ Priorat; Sarah Jane Evans MW, on L’Ermita and the region’s elevation to DOQ status. ↩