2011 Terroir Al Limit Torroja Del Priorat

Terroir Al Limit was founded by Eben Sadie and Dominik Huber in 2001. Sadie brought his background as one of South Africa’s most admired young winemakers and Huber was a wine enthusiast with a career in business. The pair bought grapes in 2001 and make their first Dits de Terra. In the following years they added cuvées to reflect the terroir of Priorat and applied Burgundian style winemaking to their process. Their goal is always to aim for elegance rather than sheer power. Sadie left Terroir al Limit in 2011 to focus on winemaking in South Africa, and Huber has taken over all operations, including winemaking. Besides making Carignan and Grenache-based reds, Terroir al Limit makes whites from such indigenous grapes as Pedro Ximenez and Macabeo. Wine Advocate often rates the wines in the mid-90s, and noted that the estate’s “wines seem to be going from strength to strength, with great definition, delineation and freshness, more transparent to the terroir, more about the place than the varietal…”

Priorat in southern Catalonia is one of Spain’s newer regions for quality wines. With only about 2,500 vineyard acres, it is not one of Spain’s larger appellations, and its rocky mountains and hillsides make for challenging vineyard management. But grapes have been grown here in the rich, volcanic soil since at least the Middle Ages, when Carthusian monks planted vineyards. Bulk wines were the main focus here until the late 1970s, when pioneering Spanish winemakers Alvaro Palacios and René Barbier replanted vineyards and vastly improved winemaking in the region. Clos Mogador, Clos Erasmus and Finca Dofi were some of the now much-admired wineries started in the later decades of the 20th century. By the 1990s many innovative, quality-focused wineries were started in Priorat, making it one of the hottest winemaking regions in Spain. Priorat was made a DO in 1954 but upgraded to the prestigious Demoninación de Origen Calificada, or DOCa, in 2000. (In Catalan, the regional language, the appellation abbreviation is DOQ.) Full-flavored, full-bodied wines with relatively high alcohol content are characteristic of Priorat, with Garnacha (Grenache) and Carinena (Carignan) being the traditional grapes.