Bodegas Mas Alta

Since its discovery in the 1990s, Priorat, with its excellent but also demanding conditions for top winegrowing, has repeatedly attracted winemakers who are looking for a special challenge but also have the rather rare ability to master it. This is what happened to the French winegrowing icon Michel Tardieu, who produced wines on the Rhone, for example in Chateauneuf-du-Pape. He produces wines at the level of the internationally renowned winegrowing icons such as Etienne Guigal or Jean-Luis Chave. He discovered this small spot not far from the city of Tarragona with its fantastic terroir of fine-leaved slate and a vine population of 50 to 120-year-old vines. In the Vanhoutte family, he found exactly the right operators for a winery in this gifted corner of the small, exclusive Priorat region, although he remained as a consultant to the newly founded winery. In 2004, the first wine was released under the name Mas Alta, and it immediately caused a sensation - not only that, experts and critics immediately praised it as one of the best in the region, despite the extremely well-known competition, which produces excellent and original wines from the barren terroir. For this rise among Spain's wine elite, investments were also made in the construction of a state-of-the-art winery that sets standards both inside and outside Spain. The 35 hectares of vines are planted with the indigenous varieties Garnacha and Carignano as well as the international varieties Cabernet Sauvignon and Syrah. A specific and unique feature is a small quantity of white wine made from the indigenous varieties Garnache Blanco, Macabeo and Pedro Ximenez. But the total number of bottles produced here also corresponds to that of an absolute boutique winery; the total of 20,000 bottles is nothing compared to the great demand worldwide for these exceptional wines. So if you want to enjoy them, you need patience and perseverance.