Mas La Mola

Mas La Mola makes its wine in Poboleda, a village in the northern part of Priorat, in southern Catalonia. Priorat is a hard place to farm: steep terraces of llicorella, the black slate that splits into flakes and holds almost no water, under a Mediterranean sun, with vines that yield very little and roots that go a long way down for what they get. That combination is why Priorat reds taste the way they do, concentrated, mineral and firm, and why they have never been cheap.

The wines are made by Jordi Masdeu, a founding partner of Vinitum, the small Catalan house that Mas La Mola belongs to. The winery is in the village itself rather than out on an estate road, and the operation is genuinely artisanal in size. What marks it out is altitude. The northern end of Priorat around Poboleda runs higher than the warmer southern sectors, and Mas La Mola work parcels from around 350 metres up to 800 metres. Their Masdeu vineyard, at 800 metres, is one of the highest sites in the whole appellation. Height means cooler nights, a longer hang and, in the glass, freshness and lift alongside the concentration, which is exactly what Priorat is often accused of lacking.

The range is built on Garnacha and Cariñena, the two varieties that Priorat is really about, and the parcels are treated separately rather than blended into one estate red. Alongside the two main reds there is La Vinya de Coster, from ninety-year-old Cariñena vines in Poboleda, made in a run of 468 bottles and scored 93 points by Wine Spectator; Masdeu, from that 800 metre parcel, all but a fraction of it Garnacha Peluda, fermented with indigenous yeasts and made with minimal intervention; and a white, Poboleda Vi de Vila, from a single organically farmed parcel called Salanques at 575 metres, planted to old Garnacha Blanca, Pedro Ximénez and Macabeo, spontaneously fermented and aged partly in old barrels and glass demijohns. That white is an unusual thing and it tells you these are not people making Priorat by numbers.

Vi d'Altura is the flagship of those two, old-vine Garnacha from the high parcels, given a year in used French oak. L'Expressió del Priorat is the earlier-drinking one, a Garnacha and Cariñena blend with only a short spell in barrel, and it is the least expensive way I know into serious Priorat. Both are certified vegan.

What I like about this producer is the price. Priorat's reputation was built in the 1990s by a handful of wines that now cost a great deal of money, and the region has been expensive ever since. Mas La Mola are making wine from the right villages, the right slate and some genuinely high, old parcels, and selling it at the sort of money you would pay for a decent Côtes du Rhône Villages or a mid-range Rioja. That gap is the reason to pay attention to them.