On Saturday, August 29th, Albert Costa, the co-owner and winemaker of Vall Llach in Porrera along with famous folk singer and co-owner Lluís Llach, Priorat held a press tasting that featured a vertical of every single Vall Llach wine made from 1999-2008 and we were only missing the 1998 and 2009 vintages. 1998 was the first vintage and a rather hot year and the blend was very atypical of what would start in 1999 so I assume that’s why we didn’t taste that vintage.
So why only until 2008 you might ask? Well, from 2009 on, Albert made the decision to split his flagship wine in to two different lines that would showcase a different aspect of the winery’s best vineyards. The Vi de Vila – Porrera 2009 was the first to be released and is comprised of mostly Carignan along with a smaller proportion of Grenache. The Vi de Finca – Mas de la Rosa 2010 which is mostly Carignan with just a touch of Grenache and Cabernet Sauvignon in that year. Both are excellent and both worth trying if you want to see what Porrera and more to the point, Albert, is capable of producing these days.
But these two wines weren’t the stars of the evening. Those were the 10 vintages awaiting all of us that showed the journey to arrive at these two new flagship wines. It’s been an interesting route given that the older vintages, like most in Priorat started with a much greater proportion of French grapes that have slowly given way to what are deemed the “native” grapes of Priorat, namely Carignan and Grenache.
This of course elicited a number of random comments from some of the other journalists in attendance such as stating that one of the older vintages was “100% Pomerol”, Pomerol being a Right Bank Bordeaux AOP that is predominantly Merlot and Cabernet Franc most famously known for Château Pétrus which is actually 100% Merlot. This is of course a curious thing to say for wines that, while having some Merlot in the past, have never had it as the dominant player (not even 1/3 of the blend except in 1999) and there’s never been any Cabernet Franc in the Vall Llach.
Tasting and writing (somewhat) legible tasting notes for 10 wines in a short time isn’t easy, especially when some of my fellow journalists were more involved in drinking the wines than actually analyzing them. I ended up with a full page of notes for which I was berated as being “a Hemingway”. Not a horrible accusation as he’s one of my favorite authors, but it’s easy to see in some of the other articles that arrived before this one that analysis went out of the went as the window as they made their way through the vintages with either no vintage notes arriving in the end or the 2008 having a succinct, “good” which was probably followed by a lascivious burp and “more please”.
In no way am I saying that I’m a better or more learned journalist. I’m just saying that if you plan to actually write something afterwards, there’s no way in hell you’re going to remember the profile of 10 years of the same wine after drinking them for four hours–although I left after two given that Albert was hosting us in his home and I know he gets up early for work. It’s also true that I’m quite lucky to know Albert well and to have gone to the Mas de la Rosa vineyard before (it’s the cover photo of the 2nd edition Priorat book) and so it was easier to just focus on tasting the wines I suppose.
It was after all an excellent and memorable evening that Albert put together and the vineyard trips to the old vine Carignan and newer Viognier were stupendous during this last heavy breath of August heat so that we could appreciate the freshness of these two high altitude locations. Again, many thanks to Albert and Lluís for their time and without further ado, the last decade of the wine, Vall Llach.
