How can you make your investment fit for the future when redeveloping facilities? Perelada, in its winery in northeast Spain, has the answers. The planning for this large-scale investment began more than 20 years ago,” says Delfí Sanahuja, chief oenologist at Perelada winery, “when the family first conceived the idea of building a new winery in Perelada. The vision was to create a project that not only honoured the region’s rich winemaking tradition, but also looked to the future with ambition.” It was a substantial brief and a substantial undertaking. The timing, however, merited it. Founded in 1923, the winery, nearing its 100th year of producing wines in DO Empordà, decided to invest in a new winery, as part of its commitment to innovation and excellence. Its illustrious history includes serving wines to Salvador Dalí and US presidents, so the investment in a state-of-the-art winery was fitting to uphold its legacy for the next century. And yet, embarking on such a project is not for the faint-hearted. It provoked several questions. How could it improve winemaking? How could Perelada respect the terroirs in this northeastern pocket of Spain? Perhaps most importantly, how could it safeguard the winery’s future? Laying the foundations With any large-scale project, intention and direction are essential from the very beginning. So, in Perelada’s case, the first stages involved asking what the team wanted from a new facility. That began, Sanahuja recounts, with a central objective from the Suqué Mateu family that founded and still owns the
This Article was originally published on The Drink Business - Wine
