In the vineyards of L'Ermita, we spoke with Álvaro Palacios, wine artist, and his daughter Lola, an oenologist trained in the five best wineries in the world, who has just returned to the family wineries to emulate her father and create something new. For two days we shared couplets, old vines wrapped in mystique, and of course, the juice of the gods.
It's nightfall when we arrive at Gratallops (Tarragona), and the mountain kingdom welcomes us with a reverential silence. On the slopes, the vineyards meander cradled by that mysterious Montsant that exhibits totem-like shapes. The land pulls: those of us who were born nearby and traveled to Falset or Siurana in our childhood, feel that pinch produced by the stormy geography of Priorat and its fairy-tale towns, where we ate hazelnuts. At that time, there were only four wineries that made souvenir wine.
Today there are more than a hundred with Priorat designation of origin. “The geology of the area seems like a drunkenness, an internal, disordered and powerful force that rattles the earth” wrote Josep Pla. Some French monks arrived on that land of llicorella in the 12th century, to whom the king granted land to repopulate through his prior (hence, priory). They built the monastery of Santa Maria de Escaladei and for six centuries they dedicated themselves to the viticulture, applying the wise methods developed by the Cistercians. Perhaps for this reason, wine is grown here as if it were prayed. Small-run wines, expensive, polished, at the antipodes of industrial production whose vines rise in ravines or slopes in front of the Llaveria, Argentera and Montsant mountain ranges, emanating a brilliant mist, as if the landscape made us a promise.
Álvaro Palacios' winery inserts its fine geometry into the landscape in the shape of a modern cabin. In its humid and dark basement, the treasure is kept: the L'Ermita foudres, broth of gods, one of the most excellent wines produced in Spain. Award-winning, revered, with one hundred points on the Parker list, Palacios wines represent an elixir of excellence.
Around Gratallops are the L'Ermita vineyards, centuries-old Grenache and Carignan vines that receive 4,000 hours of sun a year, little rain, inland wind and sea breeze. A maximum of 6,000 bottles are produced per year and a minimum of 2,500; after expanding this year to two hectares of cultivation, five in total.
The night is mild despite it being January. Nicolás, a gypsy with an art in singing, friend and occasional driver of Álvaro, says goodbye – he accompanies him from Bierzo to Alfaro (La Rioja), and, from there, back to Gratallops, with a pillow on the seat. Cristina Jiménez, Álvaro's wife, has prepared an exquisite dinner. Her daughter Lola, 26, opens a bottle of wine and Álvaro exclaims “ailoviú.” And father and daughter start humming Let me fly, by La Macanita. We talked for two and a half hours.
Lola, have you smelled wine since you were little?
L.P.: Sure! It is part of my life… We live between the three wineries. And, here, at night you smell wine, especially during the grape harvest...
Á.P.: Lola really likes grapes, celebrations, drinking wine, something that is being lost in Spain and that is maintained in France... And she has a lot of stamina. Put up with her father, I mean.
L.P.: He loves to dress up.
Á.P.: No, no. It's just that she has more stamina than me, and that annoys me.
L.P.: Everyone can tolerate great wines, since they are very healthy.
Á.P.: Of course, the effect is much more inspiring, exciting and vital. It is the balm of the elderly. Whiskey? Only good wine, you wake up in the morning like a king after victory.
Lola, when did you decide to dedicate yourself to wine? Was she predestined?
L.P.: I really like nature, and especially the vineyard. I am passionate about viticulture, taking care of plants. Also the winery, but I consider that the most important thing is the vineyard. I always knew I would dedicate myself to this.
Á.P.: Since she was 14 we have made her work every summer, from 9 in the morning, in the winery.
L.P.: When I came from high school, in the US, I got angry. And he told me: “Your grandfather didn't scold me because he came home from work, but on time to work.” So I said to myself: “Oh, yeah? Well get ready!” And he would go to the Sanfermines, and, on the way back, he would go to work without sleeping. And he didn't reproach me for anything either.
Did you have any idols as a child?
My father. It's always been him, since I was little. It sounds very silly, but it's the truth. Since I returned from Napa Valley to stay, after seven years in France and California, we walk and talk a lot together, and I see that we both have deep-rooted respect for the land.
And does your mother, Cristina, enhance that common world?
L.P.: My mother is the pillar of the family and the three companies. Everything, let's go. I've never seen her angry. She is the one who keeps peace at home.
Á.P.: Cristina is the person who has helped me the most; always there.
Do father and daughter argue a lot?
L.P.: No. Although we are yin-yin.
Á.P.: We have learned that the first thing is to enjoy, respecting each person's freedom, doing things because we want to and not out of obligation.
L.P.: I remember years ago you told me: “Lola, you and I are not going to argue anymore. We are already colleagues. Father-daughter arguments are over.” And the truth is that it has stayed that way. We even go out together. My parents and a friend of mine, also a flamenco singer, are my group. We have the same taste: a lot of copla, flamenco... We have always been singing a lot at home.
Álvaro, how did you become interested in flamenco?
Á.P.: Throughout Spain the copla, which is the quintessential Spanish song, was heard everywhere, and fandangos were sung at work in the fields. Then Manolo Caracol came on the radio, and the flamenco song spread throughout the peninsula. I believe that even before the radio there is a connection with Andalusian music in Spain and music in general, the alegrías of Cádiz and the fandango of Huelva are like the jotas. Of course, they have the same notes as the Navarrese jota from Aragon, and the Asturian tune is also a flamenco proclamation. My father always sang and played the guitar, every family sang.
How does the miracle of the Priorat occur?
Á.P.: I am nobody or nothing, this is a historical circumstance. I couldn't make this wine if I weren't in a historic wine region like this: it's a unique heritage value, where I was able to acquire vines, old vines, vines unaltered for centuries, something unprecedented. In the 80s, in Spain all traditional viticulture began to be destroyed, to move to intensive viticulture, vine growing and mechanized harvesting. I perceive that circumstance in France. There I learned that great wine comes from a vineyard touched by a divine gift. I base myself on the first three pages of the books on the history of wine: first the mythology: Egypt, Dionysus, Bacchus, Jesus Christ. There you find mysticism, spirituality, drunk monks, the blood of all the gods. The adoration. The blood of all our Mediterranean rivers. The cult. And then, obviously, you needed the old world: the wisdom of the traditions, the affinity of its strains. In Rioja, back in '89, it was more difficult to do something like that, you had to make 400,000 boxes a year to be someone. It was a somewhat grand atmosphere where it was difficult to highlight the vestiges and viticultural essences of its rich environment.
What are the reasons?
Á.P.: The rural world of Spain went into decline at the beginning of the 20th century, we did not have the navigable rivers, like France, nor the cereal harvests that France or Germany have had, nor the power of England. Imagine if you came here to Gratallops and told me: “Separate for me this harvest that I just tasted. I pay you in advance and you reserve future ones for me… That happened in Burgundy. That happened in Bordeaux. That happened in Champagne"...
And that is the stimulus that triggers your ambition?
Á.P.: I wanted to undertake a challenge. A healthy revenge. I wanted to put Spanish wine at the level of the great French club. That is the dream, a total challenge... We have also achieved it in Bierzo with my nephew Titín and now also from our native Rioja.
L.P.: Since I was little I always heard about the big clubs and I didn't fully understand it until I went to Burgundy, to the Domaine de la Romanée-Conti. It hooks you. Not just the wineries... every town that has a denomination, every plot, every tasting.
Á.P.: Burgundy has reached the valuation of 80 million euros per hectare of grand cru. In Rioja, someone who turns his back, who does not want to sell you, would cost a maximum of 150,000-200,000 euros for a good vineyard. And here in Priorat we are at 100,000. In Spain, no one dares to take the leap of making high-priced wines while the world is asking for them.
A personal challenge...
Á.P.: I was born with a very special passion. I was always very extroverted, but natural. Open, optimistic, positive and with a lot of ambition, a controlled and romantic ambition, which has not made me a millionaire. When René brought me here, I said to myself: “This is what Americans want, what the world wants.” I loved the export market. I felt that it was something very patriotic, although later I became disillusioned.
Why have you felt this break?
Á.P.: Spain is the largest wine producer in the world with France and Italy. There are three blocks of the old world, but Spain was submerged in wine-growing oblivion due to its own decline. As we said before, we re-engage at losses. Before Franco, loss of colonies, globalization. The train destroys the rural fabric, the traditional sale of products in the regions... And the loss of the colonies revolutionizes Spanish society and turns it against each other. The Civil War marks the final blow to rural areas. It kills him. In France it never happened. In Spain they turn their backs on the countryside and focus on industrialization. The agricultural cooperatives of the 1940s wanted to solve a problem that was already impossible. And globalization is still there: for cereal from Girona to be profitable, the European Union has to pay the CAP because it is cheaper to bring cereal from Ukraine or the United States than that grown here. Because of the soil and climate, whatever you want, and also because transportation is very cheap.
Let's talk now about the French view of wine...
L.P.: They are passionate, impeccable and very humble people. On one occasion I congratulated Monsieur Aubert de Villaine – from the Domaine Romanée-Conti winery – on the harvest and he replied: “You don't have to give it to me, it's all from the vineyard.” He will be over 80 years old and he was with the workers at six in the morning to say good morning, drink wine and teach you how to do it right. Then I understood my father more. And what I wanted to do.
Á.P.: French wines know how to taste the soil, read between the lines what is under the vineyard, and in the air, and in the light. But they have had good buyers. Because Spain was the same. But Spain, at the moment, has no buyers. People who come to you and tell you “separate this one for me.”
He has stopped a new project in Alfaro because of the wind farms, against whom he has declared war. Like in the movie Alcarrás.
Á.P.: I haven't seen it, because I have suffered so much with this that I still don't have the courage to see it. This country is ungoverned. Everything works because the rest of us work. We have what we deserve. Here people took to the streets in 2006 and Montsant is today a natural park. We help an environmental association dedicated to birds, Seo Birdlife. Castilla y León has just banned wind farms in wine-growing areas. I am the president of Landscapes and Vineyards of Spain and of the Rioja Landscape Commission, I have put many hours into this... Finally, the new community president has just announced that no more.
The winemaker, who recognizes two mentors: his father, and René Barbier, who discovered his Kathmandu (Priorat) for him. When Barbier collaborates with the Palacios, he gets Álvaro into Petrus. At the same time, Álvaro falls in love with Cristina: "I met her on a vermouth day. I saw her and said: this girl, what is this? It was very difficult for me to get hold of her, she had suitors everywhere. But well, that's already done." I solved it." And upon returning from France he knows that he wants to make a great wine, so he decides to leave the family winery and change the route for his father, "I imagine it was very hard for him." With Cristina they took the car every weekend, in search of a land of the Old World.
Currently, Álvaro shares his passion with his daughter Lola, who for six years has worked in the best wineries in the world: Dominio de Pingus, Chateau Le Pin in Bordeaux, Domaine de la Romanée Conti, Clos de Tart and Prieuré Roch in the Burgundy, Jean-Louis Chave in the Rhône, and Harlan State and Promontory in Napa Valley. "He is going to be a devouring machine in the world of international wine," says his father.
Raised in the countryside, she rides horses, loves animals, has a vital character and an inner world of her own. She rejects the styling and makeup for the photo shoot: “How am I going to go to the vineyard like this. "You don't go to the vineyard with your eyes painted," she exclaims, she who makes a bun and puts on a pair of panties, spending hours and hours taking care of her branches. In the end we convince her to wear an artisan dress, the color of her Garnacha, but not before saying to ourselves: “And why don't you put colored clothes on my father?”
At what age did you start drinking wine, Lola?
L.P.: As a little girl I used to say: “Not must, wine.” I started with my finger, and little by little it was small sips. At 14, already in the cup.
And you weren't worried?
Á.P.: No. It is natural in the rural world, which seems so different today.
What is the most difficult job in the vineyard?
Á.P.: Pruning.
L.P.: Pruning, no. It's difficult to do it well. But for me the most difficult thing in France was pulling the branches and burning them. When I was in the Rhône, I broke the big toe on my hand and they gave me three weeks' sick leave, but I wanted to finish the pruning with the broken hand...
Do you also dream of creating a great wine like your father?
L.P.: My idea is to continue with the great wines we have at home, what I respect the most. But my dream would be to get into a new world: look for another terrain and create my own story. Always something shared, because we are a very united family.
Lola, what do you appreciate when you drink? What are the characteristics for a wine to fascinate you?
L.P.: It's going to sound a little cheesy, but when we taste wines and I say “Wow! How my heart is beating”, it is a physical sensation. The aromas, the mouth, everything…
And as for the palate?
L.P.: The texture, the most. Furthermore, during Covid I lost my sense of smell for a short time, and there I learned so much how important it is. Even more than the aromas.
What is texture?
L.P.: It is the caress that wine gives you, not only in your mouth, on your tongue, cheeks, gums, and also when it goes down your throat. I remember, once in Burgundy, a very typical taste; I was with covid and I told dad: “The creaminess that the wine here makes you feel. I'm talking about a bottle, the kind you find once in a lifetime, it was a Domaine Leroy, Chambolle-Musigny Les Fremières 2015."
What measures are they applying in the face of the great drought and the risks of climate change?
Á.P.: Making great wines is a permanent frustration. This job is full of endless doubts, everything remains in an infinite succession of questions. Above all, when you also want to fly and you are not just satisfied with the fruit being healthy, but you also want to extract that magic that captivates the sensors of your heart and brain and produces an extreme, indescribable emotion that awakens your fantasy. and cancel time. Because great wine is such a spiritual pleasure that it distances itself from any tangible pleasure, being one of the most mysterious. Despite knowing the land where you have spent 32 years working wine, now everything has to be relearned. There is also that baggage from behind.
What does the Priorat smell like?
L.P.: To me it smells like fennel, thyme and llicorella. El Bierzo, rock rose, is humid and smells like rain, like the Atlantic. And Alfaro is thyme and pine for me.
What differences are there between the light of Priorat and Rioja or Bierzo?
Á.P.: Here the sea is 20 kilometers away. It is a mirror that radiates light. An architect will never give you the color white. With Rafael Moneo I learned a lot, especially with the Bierzo winery. Portuguese paving stones in patios can never be white because the light will bounce off them, and it will turn them blue or black, because you know that there is luminosity. In Priorat the soils are brown and there is a lot of green, matte and dark. The orography is micro-majestic.
Do you cry with emotion in the vineyards?
Á.P.: Because of failures, unfortunately, because of frustration... Yes, you cry, but also because of the emotion of what it gives us.
Now there are quite a few women in wine…
L.P.: A cousin of mine, Bárbara, makes wine in La Rioja. And I admire her a lot for everything she makes of her.
Á.P.: But Madame Lalou Bize is the queen. She is now 91 years old, she is the person who has made the best wine in the history of wine and she is a woman.
L.P.: That is one of the ones that has been my total idol. She is wild…
Álvaro often talks about the mystique of wine, the story of the monks who when they drank they came closer to God...
Á.P.: Wine has been a very powerful element since the late Middle Ages. Hence, the Pope's castle in the Southern Rhône was even moved to Burgundy, to Châteauneuf: to play with the value of great wines. The wine thing was something tremendous, which meant the consecration and also the food and routine care of the people. An absolute exaltation. The ritual is the wine, the happy communion of people when we toast the best for everyone. Then there will be no star without vines.
