Apart from the cereal fields there is still some witness to the wine-producing past of the Alta Segarra area, between the Anoia, Segarra, Bages and Solsonès regions. Dozens of strains have survived the passage of time and now a project wants to document, recover and value them.
“It seems that the area of ??the historic Segarra has always been cereal, but it is not. Not so many years ago, especially in the 18th and 19th centuries, it was a wine-growing area”, explained the person in charge of Cat Patrimoni, Pere Tardarà. The first strains were detected three years ago and, since then, more than a hundred have been geolocated in 32 different properties. Presses dug into the rock and vineyard sheds have also been found.
Wine production in the Alta Segarra area has been documented for many centuries. In fact, the oldest surviving heritage and archaeological element is a wine production system with sinks dug into the rock from the late-ancient period and located in the municipality of Aguilar de Segarra.
From the 17th and 18th centuries, wine production was centralized around the country houses in the area. Tardà explains that the vineyards that were grown in Alta Segarra were not for sale or export, but for personal consumption: “Before, you didn’t drink water but wine, because it was safer to drink wine, since the water could be contaminated.”
It is a system in which the distance between the rows of vines is wider than usual and, in between, it resembles cereal or legume. “In the same piece they had vines, wheat, barley or chickpeas”, explains the person in charge of Cat Patrimoni. The vines that have been preserved are found by the margins of the cereal fields or hidden by the forest. Apart from the vines, they also Vineyard huts, presses dug into the rock and old cellars in farmhouses in the area have been located.
In the last three years, Tardà has dedicated himself to searching for and documenting the vestiges of the area’s winemaking past and, specifically, has documented more than a hundred vines distributed in 32 different locations, all of them at an altitude of between 550 meters and 800 meters above sea level. But Tardà says that it is “alive” research, since new strains are constantly appearing. From now on, the person in charge of Cat Patrimoni plans to launch a project to recover these vines with measures to preserve them to prevent them from dying and also to mark them.
The project also contemplates the identification of the grape varieties that are in each vine. From here, Tardà explains, they want to create a historic vineyard where the varieties that have been documented and recovered can be grafted. The idea is that it be a “safe vineyard” for the vines and that it ends up becoming a space that can be visited with the aim of “raising awareness among the population about the ancient viticulture of Alta Segarra”.