The Baixada 2021

If there is one Spanish winemaker whose talent and genius is recognized worldwide, it is Alvaro Palacios . His wines, full of complexity and elegance, have breathed new life into the wines of Spain. The winery, based in the Spanish wine region of Priorat, is renowned for producing wines that faithfully reflect the unique terroir of this region. A pioneer in the use of biodynamic viticulture methods in Spain, Álvaro Palacios has greatly contributed to raising the profile of Priorat wines through his innovative and high-end vintages.

Cuvée La Baixada is a relatively recent addition to the Alvaro Palacios 'crus', coming from an isolated 1.3 hectare plot on the Finca Dofi vineyard (another cuvée in the range). The Grenache vines, planted in 1996 on slate soils and then grafted with plant material from Ermita (the estate's legendary cuvée), produce airy clusters with small, very low-yielding berries. The harvest is manual, with partial destemming and fermentation taking place in tuns using indigenous yeasts. The wine is aged for 20 months in tuns and then bottled without fining or filtration. This wine gives off intense aromas of black fruits , wild berries , blackberries , blueberries , blue plum , white pepper, violets , liquorice, graphite and Mediterranean spices . The palate is juicy and supple with fine tannins and mineral tension and takes us to a persistent and complex finish.

The history of wine in Spain is so old that no one really knows who brought the first vines to the region. When the Phoenicians arrived some 3,000 years ago and founded the present-day cities of Cádiz and Jerez, viticulture was well established and Spanish wines were widely marketed throughout the Mediterranean and North Africa. You could say that Spain is a wine miracle. After years spent away from the world of fine wines, she is today a major player. Investment and ambition in the vineyards and cellars results in increasingly rich and complex (often very alcoholic) and spicy reds which are increasingly appreciated by international consumers. Proud to have more land devoted to vines than any other country, Spain is only beginning to capitalize on this resource consistently. Spain is an anarchic tangle of regions and sub-regions, just as its landscape is an anarchic tangle of incredibly raw landscapes. A glance at a map reveals the climatic diversity among Spain's many wine regions, from the soggy green vineyards of Galicia on the northern Atlantic coast to the toasty vineyards of southeastern the Mediterranean. Spain's saving grace, in terms of viticulture, is the average altitude of its vineyards, above 600 meters. A large part of Spanish vineyards therefore manage to produce grapes of good color and acidity simply because night temperatures are relatively low and the grapes do not ripen until the end of a sufficiently long growing period. But there is real treasure to be found for those willing to dig and, now that a class of connoisseurs has developed in Spain, all manner of ambitious investors have done their part to change the image of Spanish wine . Today, a new generation of winemakers has quietly begun making spectacular wines and experimenting with grape varieties that would have been unthinkable just a short time ago. Wine remains an important commodity and is an integral part of Spanish culture.