Andrew Jefford tastes 2019 Torres Mas de la Rosa Vinyes Velles Porrera Priorat.
The wind was blowing, I remember. Not a gale, but the air was in movement. We wanted to taste this wine in the vineyard from which it had come—so here we were, glasses in hand: Jamie Goode and I, with Fermí Ferré, who looks after the vines, and Isabel Vea Barbany, who speaks beautiful English, as well as Spanish and Catalan and could help us all find words to share.
Priorat suggests this. I’d done the same with Bixente Oçafrain of Mas Alta in La Vilella Alta, when I’d been here in 2017, drinking white Solana Alta 2014 in vineyard light that was glittering even on All Hallows’ Eve. Mas de la Rosa 2019 (in April 2024) was pale red, a blend of 60% Carinyena and 40% Garnacha, with a few rogue vines of Picapoll.
There is, though, a drawback to tasting wines in vineyards. We sniffed—but it was the wind that stole off with the wine’s aromas, to enjoy behind a rock, or soaring over the valley, or surveying the Scala Dei, God’s Ladder, a series of cliffs lying 10 miles (16km) farther north. Never mind: This seamless, calm red had hidden aromas inside its flavors, too. The wild lavender was in flower in the unpeeled spring air all around us, so it was hard not to imagine its pungent clutch in the wine; we also thought of roots and warmed stone and salt. Elemental
This Article was originally published on World of Fine Wine
