The Porróncast
A Wine, Spirits and Non-Alc. Podcast spotlighting the stories of people who share the Porrón.
Hosted by Ryan Looper.
The Porróncast
A Meditative Masterclass Uncovering the Magic of Priorat w/ Jose Mas Barberá of Costers del Priorat
Winemaker and Master of Wine candidate Jose Mas gives a masterclass on Priorat through the lens of Costers del Priorat, an important producer in Priorat committed to preserving the history of this special place by honoring the deep traditions, indigenous grapes, and practices of the past in order to pass the history of Priorat along to future generations.
From the ancient Arabs and Carthusian monks to the magical slate soils on steep slopes and varied local grapes, this is the compelling story of a region that has risen from one of the poorest areas in Catalonia to become one of Catalonia's top five economies discovered through the visionary and meditative voice of Costers del Priorat winemaker, Jose Mas Barberá.
For deeper information on Costers del Priorat and availability in the US, click here.
Follow Jose Mas on IG: @jmasbarbera
Follow Costers del Priorat on IG: @costersdelpriorat
Follow us on IG: @demaisoneast and @theporroncast
The Porróncast is hosted and produced by Ryan Looper - @iamlooper
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For deeper information on any producer featured on this episode click here and search producer name
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If you find a Porrón on the back label of a bottle, it is imported to the USA exclusively by the spectacular importer and team @dmselections
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Original Music by Julian Tamers - @juliantamers on IG and Tiktok
Welcome to the Poroncast.
Speaker 2:Alright, fantastic Little drums inspired by some old sitcoms, actually, and Stephen Colbert Actually, julian Tamers did this music. Did you know that? That's good? Jose Mas, here from Priarad, it's so good to see you. No pressure, I didn't give you any intro, but, yeah, get really close. So, jose, where are you from?
Speaker 1:Well, I'm from Valencia. It's south of Catalonia, but I studied between Spain and France and they worked in different places like Bordeaux, Chianti Classico, New Zealand and all over the world.
Speaker 2:Wow, I didn't know you worked in Chianti Classico. Where in Chianti Classico?
Speaker 1:Close to Gravi in Chianti.
Speaker 2:Gravi in Chianti Really stony terroir.
Speaker 1:Yeah, very small village, Santo Nati in Pocho.
Speaker 2:Santo Nati in Pocho, perfect. And you have an amazing project in Priarad called Costeres del Priarad, which we're lucky enough at the Maison to represent and have for many years at this point, I've been working with your wines for gosh, is it eight, nine years? Yeah, something like that. Yeah, what started that project for you, costeres?
Speaker 1:Well, the project that started in 2002 was three friends that wanted to have a little bit of a small project, a small illusion, in Priarad. Yeah, started like that in 2002. I arrived in 2008 and I started as a winemaker. A very small project and, yeah, very happy because nowadays the project is a little bit bigger, or at least we have more hectares than in the past. And that's beautiful because we can show what is Priarad. I mean, we have vineyards in different villages and.
Speaker 1:Priarad is complexity. It changes completely from south to north, from west to east. So in the winery with a glass we can move around Priarad, staying only in the winery.
Speaker 2:You can do a tour of Priarad just being in the winery at Costeres. One of the things I really appreciate about you, and have from the beginning, is how clear you are on the story of Priarad. The way you tell the story has always been something I've really appreciated, and I think it's something that's very misunderstood in the wine world. Priarad may be misunderstood in general and I'm just wondering if you could walk us through a little bit of the story of Priarad.
Speaker 1:Well, priarad started many, many years ago. The area was settled by the Haraps. After them arrived the monks, the Cartesian monks. For that reason, priarad the names come from the prior of the monastery, and then it was we have in Spain La Desamortización de Mendi, thaval. The people took everything to the monks. At that point it was a little bit depressive the wine culture. But nowadays I think it's different. It flourished 30 years ago Because 30 years ago it was the poorest area in Catalonia, priarad.
Speaker 2:I didn't know that. Is that just because of the challenge of maybe people left right, it was challenging to work the soils? The soils are very poor and steep and maybe it wasn't that attractive to stick around and work.
Speaker 1:And then because it was the, at the same time we had the industrialization in Spain. Young people prefer to work in the industry, in the cities yeah, in the cities it was easier, and also they earn much more than the small villages. Priarad, also, priarad it's difficult to get Priarad, you know, to arrive to Priarad Because of the roads.
Speaker 2:Oh really, there isn't like a super large station in Priarad.
Speaker 1:Nowadays it's better communicated with the rest of the country. So yeah, in the past it was, as I commented it was the poorest region in Catalonia. Nowadays it's in the top five economies in Catalonia.
Speaker 2:Incredible In terms of where Priarad is in Catalonia. Could you give us a?
Speaker 1:picture. Yeah, we are in Tarragona, which is the province, the southern province of Catalonia, and we are close to Reus it's one of the main cities or Tarragona. It's like a 40 minutes to Tarragona and we are very close to the sea. It's just 15 kilometers straight to the coast.
Speaker 2:People don't talk about that. That's not very far.
Speaker 1:No, no, no. In fact, we have the influence of the sea coming in from, mostly from north.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:And the south. It's more closed, just open. You know where the Sibirana river get to the Ebro river.
Speaker 2:So that's kind of like the doorway.
Speaker 1:Yeah, it's an influence.
Speaker 2:To the influence of the sea and I think when I talked to people about Priarad they had this impression of these big blueberry-oaked wines and that is not really the experience I have when I taste Koste, herstel, priarad and some other producers as well, and I think that they also view it as a very hot area. But they don't understand that there's maybe a lot more complexity with Priarad. So if you had to tell someone who's interested in wine why Priarad is special, Well, it's a very small area.
Speaker 1:It's only 12 kilometers square only. Yeah, we have different altitudes from 120 meters to 800 meters. Only 12 kilometers. That's incredible. Yeah, it's like a big slope. Then we have different orientations. We have a magical soil, which is slate soil, but also we have different kinds of slate. We have like a blueish slate black is slate. Another one like a granite. Another one like, yeah, red is because it's rich in iron. Another one yeah, it's more, I don't know it's the Vonian slate. Yeah, it's the oldest slate that we have. So many, many, many factors that make something very complex.
Speaker 2:And these slopes and these grapes, like what are the classic grapes of Priorat For the white, wines it's Crenace, blanc and Macabeo, also Pedro Ximénez.
Speaker 1:of course there is a little bit of Vignonier, and for the red wines we have Crenace and Carignol, but also a minor grape varieties like Pica Puey Negre.
Speaker 2:Excuse me say that again.
Speaker 1:Pica Puey Negre.
Speaker 2:Negre okay.
Speaker 1:In French is Pique Poul Noir.
Speaker 2:Pique Poul Noir oui.
Speaker 1:Yeah, so this is one of the traditional grape varieties. Yeah, but mostly it's Crenace. It's 50% and 30% is Carignol.
Speaker 2:Are you allowed in Priorat to blend other international grapes if you have them?
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, if you have them. Yes, as Cabernet, Sauvignon, Chira, Merlot.
Speaker 2:And, to my knowledge, Coste has never utilized no no, we don't use them.
Speaker 1:We prefer to show the history of Priorat. So for us, history is Crenace it's Carignol, crenace, blanc, macabeo and some. But this is for the future. Maybe we start working with a minor historical grape varieties like Monastre I think soon will be authorized in Priorat Also.
Speaker 2:Carignol Blanc. That's very interesting Is the production of white Priorat. It's 2% maybe of the total productions.
Speaker 1:Right now, I think, in 9% 9%.
Speaker 2:Okay, so it's gone up.
Speaker 1:Everybody's growing more and more white grapes.
Speaker 2:There's a history of making white wine in Priorat, of several wines actually that people don't know about besides the red, and there's this term called Brisat. Could you talk about Brisat and white wine from Priorat in general?
Speaker 1:Brisat is skin contact fermentation, but it's very Catalan fermentation style. You can see that we have just one word to design, to define this style of wine, because in Spanish maybe, it's fermentado con pieles.
Speaker 2:But doesn't sound so good. Like that Brisat sounds better.
Speaker 1:So that was the traditional system in Priorat to ferment the white grapes with the skins, and also I think there are different. It's interesting because the Mediterranean grape varieties are not aromatic. Cornice Blanc is not aromatic grape, it's not cabello. It's aromatic, but after many years in bottle.
Speaker 2:That's interesting because I think a lot of people may not consider those non-adherent aromatic grapes, but in this case, experiencing the wines, your wines, I find them to be very mineral, very textured, and so you're saying that's typical. Is that that's what the grapes are for you?
Speaker 1:Yeah, those grapes talk more about the palate than the nose. And we don't have Rieslin. We don't have, of course, a little bit of muscatel or muscat which is aromatic. So when you work with those skins you increase the intensity, you increase the energy of the wine. In palate you make the wine a little bit more linear, more textured. That's beautiful, or at least they find it interesting.
Speaker 2:I find them to be some of the most interesting wines I get to taste recently, and I don't know if this is because I've been drinking a lot of wine for many years, but I'm much more attracted to this kind of textured white. It's not some sort of crazy idea for people to say they like white burgundy, but I'm finding myself going more towards these textured wines that have quite a lot of balance and good phenolic feel on the palate. Same for you In terms of the white grapes. So you said 9% of the total production is white. Why is that? Was it one time? A lot more? Has it always been historically a low general production in this small, small area?
Speaker 1:Always have been white grapes there. For ancestors they planted mixed in the slopes, sometimes because that was the desert during harvest Really that was the red bull at that moment. That was energy for harvest or sometimes because they used to produce a little bit of white wine for home. Or also they used to make more equilibrated, more balanced wines, blending with the red wines to decrease the alcohol level, because in the past they drank wine every time Wine was water, it was the safe drink.
Speaker 1:The white grapes helped them to make something more harmonious. Also, they used for their eranthio.
Speaker 2:That's another thing I wanted to ask you about. I wanted to talk about the red wines a little bit and get into the slopes. My impression is that people don't understand how steep some of the slopes in priorata are and what it looks like, because when I see pictures on your Instagram, for instance, I'm always shocked. You look like a man on the moon and there are these old vines that are bush-trained. I mean it looks incredible. Yeah, it's true. Is there a way that you could take us there? I mean, what is? How steep is it? Is it? Can you work with a tractor in priorata?
Speaker 1:Well, in some places, yes, it's not possible. We have mules. You have mules at costares. Okay, just to to water the soil in the steepest slopes, but we have some of them that the mules don't want to go in.
Speaker 2:Really.
Speaker 1:Yeah, because it's so steep and they know Wow Okay.
Speaker 2:Have you been to like the Mosul? Is it that steep?
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, in some places. Yes, yeah in some places. Yes, then of course the southern part of priorata. It's south, yeah, west. It's less steep as the northeast, more or less yeah but depends on the village, and also in the same village there are places with very steep slopes and other areas flatter.
Speaker 2:How do you call this late soil? I know I know a lot of people see this word, but they may not know how to pronounce it. What is? How do you call this late soils?
Speaker 1:Yicorella, yicorella, yicorella.
Speaker 2:Yicorella.
Speaker 1:Depends on the village.
Speaker 2:Okay, oh really, there's a village-specific pronunciation. Oh my gosh.
Speaker 1:Yicorella, yicorella.
Speaker 2:This is why there's so much complexity in priorata, the red grapes. On these steep slopes, especially at costares, there's a heritage. There's a lot of old vines. Yeah, it's caranjian, it's granache. You said that there'd be white grapes planted. What inspires you about granache and caranjian? What do you when you're on those slopes and when you're in the cellar? What, for you, makes it so special?
Speaker 1:When you visit those steep slopes it's hard to break it, yeah, because you are there and say wow, yeah, in some vineyards the dependent is more than 50% 50% grade. Yeah, okay. And when you are there you realize and you say, well, in prior and nowadays we work and we can live. But 40 years ago, what move to the old people to follow work in those vineyards?
Speaker 2:So you're thinking to yourself why would anyone do this 40 years ago? What was the inspiration for them in the daily? Yeah?
Speaker 1:it's something special. Yeah it, we are fortunate to have those vineyards. Those vineyards doesn't belong to us because we are humans. I hope in, I don't know 50 years to be in and to pass away, but those vineyards will be remained there and other people, the new generation, will use it. It's a magical place.
Speaker 2:And Kerenjan. For whatever reason, I feel like Gurnash gets all the glory and Kerenjan gets not as much of the attention. Not yet, not yet. But are there U-Bottle, colotsina, cypress? These wines are Kerenjan and I find them to be just really, really special moving. Why is Kerenjan something you've felt like you want to plant a flag with, with coasters?
Speaker 1:Well, the Kerenjan is this kind of great variety that has energy, has a very good acidity, a very restrained alcohol level. It's difficult to have more than 15%. Maybe in some places, yes, but it's with a high level of alcohol. You have a very high level of acidity, so you have the life and then you have color, you have body. The weakness of the Kerenjan is the tanins. In what way? You need to pick them, with a very good rightness, because if not, the, the tanning is a little bit grainy, sticky, rougher, rougher tanning.
Speaker 2:It's not fine tanning, yeah, yeah, so that's the handicap. And that's a question of basically knowing when the vineyard is in that moment. It's a question of picking. Yes, of course.
Speaker 1:Normally old vines. You get a ripe fun grain tanning. The younger vineyards are more.
Speaker 2:It's a little less fine, yeah, and so you have these vineyards planted in the 1930s that you're you're bottling, yeah and also it's so important to determine where you grow Carinyon.
Speaker 1:Same for granite, because the granite is the opposite. You can have 16 degrees probably, of alcohol yeah, without acidities. So in pre-ret it's very important To look or to decide the orientation and the altitude. Yeah, that's important.
Speaker 2:I remember years ago there was an organization that would do tastings, led by some really smart people. It was called in pursuit of balance and At that time in the wine world there was an obsession with lower alcohols. But the thing for me there was always a big question mark. Balance is not about alcohol. It's about how something is woven together. So I'm not saying anyone was wrong, because I really loved what they did, but it really put the focus on the number on the back of the bottle as being what the wine was, as opposed to the expression of the wine in its full place in the glass.
Speaker 2:And I think we both probably had Barolo or Shatunas Dupap. That is so balanced that you would never know the alcohol levels there's. It's just woven together and I find that in pre-erot people oftentimes turn the bottle around and they do the same thing again, with Already deciding what the wine is without having tasted it. Because what you're saying and I know that there's a lot of shift in temperature in pre-erot, there's a lot of complexity that the grapes can have. You have these old wines, so really what's interesting to me is how balanced of 14 and a half percent wine can be, because you have all of these components, all of these things, it's more than that number.
Speaker 1:Yeah, for example, for our in a wine, in our carrying on with 14.5 for alcohol, we can have in pH like a 3.4.
Speaker 2:It's a very high that is really high, like a 6.2 in tartaric acid.
Speaker 1:It's a very high acidity.
Speaker 2:That is Just amazing and something that I don't think people think about. I want to take a very short break and then we'll come back and talk about Ransi, we'll talk about villages and we'll talk a little bit about what you do in the cellar. You're listening to Jose Maas from Coste's. They'll pre-erot on the Perón cast. All right, jose, we're back quick break. So let's talk about the villages, because I think the one thing in Spain that's a challenge is oftentimes the. The style of the wine or the area has Become famous, but the villages which offer different expressions have not, and I think pre-erot falls into this category. Like Rioja, for instance, you'd sit with a sommelier and say they're like a Rioja Alvesa and then you'll say, oh, where's it from? And they'll be Alvesa. So in preerot, could you walk us through a little tour of some of the villages? I know you work with a fair amount of the best villages, but maybe go further on what that means and the kind of spread in this small area.
Speaker 1:In Brea we find 12 villages. In the south we have the southern East village is El Mola. The village, strictly saying, is outside of the palatial but Part of the municipality is inside. This is the warmest place in in pre-erot. Here we are around hundred, 20 hundred 50 meters of altitude, very low precipitation, high temperatures or at least warm during the Decorovan season. Then we move a little bit to Right area is, which is beimundo, preerot. Yeah, here we start to find more slate soils, redis, mostly ready slate soil, and here we have a warm area but with a very Durnal shift. Yes, day night we have maybe like a 15 degrees of difference. Then we move a little bit up and we have grata jobs.
Speaker 2:That's a village a lot of people would probably know.
Speaker 1:Yes, yeah, also we have some video arts in grata jobs. Then we have falset, but same as in El Mola, there is a part of the municipality which is inside of the preerot appellation, so we call the scoys the falset. Okay, was mazos, but falset is Monsanto palatio. And in this point, at this area it's very interesting because you have high altitudes we have vineyard in the south. Yeah, this area is south of preerot, but it's almost 700 meters of altitude. Wow, crazy, crazy.
Speaker 1:Yeah and then you take the road and you follow up To porrera. It's a well-known village. Then in the left side we have a Loa, which is also Warm area, yeah, or at least it's a little bit warmer than Porrera. Also we have La Villea Baixa and La Villea Alta. Both villages are close to the Sioran, are the Monsanto River, yeah, but the differences are the altitude. And then a little bit more up we have Scala dei, another place people probably know, and also here it's Temperatus tend to be lower, a little bit more Precipitations.
Speaker 1:Then we move a little bit more up. We have La Moreira. It's the highest point. Here the main vineyards are around seven to eight hundred meters of altitude. You are at the foothills of the Monsanto and it's a very impressive place. In a very clear day you see the sea, wow. And then we have Poboleda we can say that the Concejo Regulador they divide the appellation in three areas, yeah, so well. Mola Bay, munt, yeah, it's the warmest and lowest. Then we have Grata, yopse, la Villea, also La Villea Alta, villea Baixa, lloa we can say this is the central. And Toroja, Toroja.
Speaker 2:Yeah, that's a famous village.
Speaker 1:Yeah, it's in the middle of the appellation. And then we have the Coolest area, which is the north, la Moreira La Moreira, scala dei Porreira, poboleda. So this is the three areas.
Speaker 2:Is there a dramatic soil difference in these or is it? You have those variations of slate and yeah, probably hard to say, yeah, it's.
Speaker 1:It's complicated to talk about soils in Pira because we have, of course, the most important soil is slate. But all those areas close to the river Siorana and Monsanto, you can see, you can imagine it. It's not slate, it's a beaver, rogues or sandy soil. Normally people doesn't tend to plant in those areas because tend to have higher humidity. So more disease problems, more productions, more water, leak grapes, so normally people tend to plant in slate soils.
Speaker 2:In terms of organics in the Pira appellation. Is that fairly typical or?
Speaker 1:is it Every year more and more?
Speaker 2:And in terms of your mentality about organics, is it? Has it changed it all over the years?
Speaker 1:No, that's it. If you do so, organics is the now and the future.
Speaker 2:Yeah, you find that working that way is harder.
Speaker 1:in Pira, yes, because of the, the steepest lobes this narrow terraces, so we need a lot of hands Every time that we want to spray with Copper or sulfur in a yards. It's difficult that, I bet, because you need time and people, exactly in the cellar at costeros.
Speaker 2:What is your? I don't want to forget to talk about Ranzio We'll do that last but I want to talk about the cellar work a little bit. I have, over the years, found you to be very, very thoughtful with the cellar work.
Speaker 1:Mm-hmm.
Speaker 2:What is your take like? What do you do in the cellar we don't have?
Speaker 1:to take. Best answer ever. We have a sorting table. It's our Technology and people. We pick up the graves at hand In a small. We use small cases, 15 kilos, that's all and then Figure it out. Yeah, all the graves are selected, pass through the sorting table and dilemma I don't know. In English, the sentence that all the workers have remind every day is the things that you don't want to eat, don't put inside of the tank. There you go. That's all people say. But If I take the grape, what berries I take out? Yeah, I'm doing the sorting during the Selecting process. So this, the berry that you don't want to eat, please don't put inside.
Speaker 2:What about stem inclusion? Is stem inclusion a thing in pre-arrot? Yes, mostly for Grenache there are a few famous granaches that have stems, so that makes sense. Do you do that? I mean, it sounds like you don't have a formula outside of don't put anything in the tank that you would need. Do you use some stem inclusion sometimes, and sometimes not especially for warm vintages.
Speaker 1:We use more stems just increase a little bit more the tension of the of the wine or the final wine. Especially we use in in Green Ash and and Sometimes for carrying on. But you must be careful, yes, because it's more you can have problems of reduction. Also, you can get some aromas of a farmyard animal. It's necessary to know what you have in terms of grapes For sure. So you have to walk a lot around the vineyards. It's the most important thing.
Speaker 2:It's interesting because I think a lot of people in the wine world would probably hear the reduction comment on caranyan and some of these barnyard-y things and immediately think of a caranyan that they've had, because I've had a fair amount of pretty reductive caranyan bottlings from France, for instance. That's fascinating. I want to talk about and just finish with rancille or rancie, which is not my favorite word in the wine world, but it's. Rancille is a style of wine and in Priarat it has a deep, deep history. We have two wines from you that fall into that category. Did you talk about rancille?
Speaker 1:Yeah, so, rancille, it was a style of wine that you found it in the past in each house of the village, and also it was the wine that when the local people visited relatives in Barcelona, it was used as a present. Oh, it's a gift. Yeah, because they believe that was the honor of the family.
Speaker 2:Wow yeah, rancille was the honor, like the gift, wow yeah.
Speaker 1:Okay, yeah, because the rancille it's an over oxidized wine, we can say like a Noloroso in the South, but in this case it's not fortified. So it's a crene asnoir that you put in a barrel, small barrels 25 liters or 15 liters, and you must forget for the rest of your life. That's the process.
Speaker 2:The process of rancille is putting yes, my mind is blown.
Speaker 1:Yeah, let me follow. Yeah. So right now at the cellar we have the four Soleras from four families. We found it in different houses. We bottled with the name of the house because we didn't do anything with this wine. It just heritates and we want to show the history of this house, the taste of this house and the culture of Priorat.
Speaker 2:So these are a group of barrels that have been filled over the years, that were the family honor that you have, and you bottle them under the family name Incredible To honor the history of Priorat and also sometimes people wouldn't see.
Speaker 1:We have many Damajuan outside with the crene asnoir. We live outside at least four years. Then we put in a big barrel of 500 liters. Then we rack to a small. We fill up a small barrels of 225 liters in different racks. Sometimes people say, but why do you do that If you don't? Maybe you never bottle in your life? And I say, yeah, but this is for the next generation. We had the ranzio from the previous or the two previous generations, because the oldest solera that we have is from 1870. That's impressive. The small barrel we call Carrette. In Italy they call Carrettello for the Vin Santo. We have quite a similar culture in this term of sweet wines, ranzio wines. That was the dessert in the past, that was the wine that the family drank after the big meals with the family. That was the.
Speaker 2:Christmas. What is your favorite pairing with ranzio?
Speaker 1:The music dessert. Very simple, you know those sample flavors and taste. But the pairing is incredible. So it's ranzio wine with nuts, almonds, hazelnuts, chestnuts. And then we make a cake, a dry cake. It's called coq rapid because it's made fast and you drink, you pair with ranzio. It's something incredible.
Speaker 2:I think we should stop there. I'm very hungry. Jose Mas of Coste Arzill, Priorat, Thank you so much. It's always great to see you. I'm very thrilled to have you in New York and I just look forward to visiting you in Priorat.
Speaker 2:Thank you Thanks for listening to the Preruncast. I'm your host, ryan Looper. Today's episode was produced by yours truly, theme music by the Julian Tamers. Special thanks to today's guests, the teams at Dumezon East and Dumezon selections and all of the growers in the Dumezon portfolio. Remember to turn the bottle around. You find the prerun. It's Dumezon and if you have a prerun party, you should really share that thing. Quit hogging it. Okay, pass the prerun. If you like the podcast, you want to find it on one of the platforms, just search the preruncast, hit follow. We got lots more to come. We're also on the Instagram at the preruncast. Look forward to sharing some more with you soon. Thanks.
