Alvaro Palacios "Les Terrasses" 2022 Priorat, Spain

The Priorat wine region is approximately 60 miles from Barcelona and is defined by its steep and rugged hills. In the twelfth century Carthusian monks camer and built monasteries in this area making terraces to cultivate this otherwise forbidding landscape that the wisdom of the monks knew to be richly fertile for the growing of grapes. Inarguably, the second and modern coming of Priorat came in the 1990's when Alvaro Palacios saw the potential of the earth for fine wine and purchased old vineyard and called his estate Finca Dofí. This was shortly followed by the creation of a second wine estate of ancient vineyard L'Ermita. With these two wine labels Priorat was emphatically ( re) established on the fine wine map. Les Terrasses might very well be the single finest introduction to the wines of Priorat. Sourced from some of the area's steepest and oldest vineyards the wine is richly perfumed, and voluptuous with blueberry and dark plum fruit. Creamy, supple and beyond words delicious.