When, in 1992, the partners in the initial project broke up so that each of us could find their own path, I felt somehow relieved. Subconsciously, when we were together, I could not give full expression to my ideas and I could not make the other take some risks I would have taken on my own. On the other hand, René knew a lot about wine and I was just beginning and I still had so many things to learn. I am convinced that the break was the correct step to take because we all had and still have our own and different personalities and, this way, we could transmit it to the wine, which helped to diversify and enrich the wine market.

I needed to start my own line of wines but, in order to get that; I could not do it any old how. I am a biologist and had a scientific university education. That is the reason why in my career I am always trying to find some justification for the importance of applying scientific methods in favour of wine quality. My impression is that the production of great wines is incompatible with science. It seems that the terms “science” and “technique” can only be used in relation to technological and commercial wines and that only if we work according to tradition and the way it has always been done, can we join the group of mythic wines …

I hope you can forgive me but I do no agree with this. I believe that the evolution of our knowledge can be compared to a relay race, where each generation has to make improvements and these, at the same time, will be used by future generations. This is what justifies our intellectual ability as human beings.
On one occasion I attended a speech given by a very well-known owner of a winery in our country, a winery that deserves great respect for its products and its trajectory. He claimed that the fact that some wines were excellent had to do with their origin, with the plot of land chosen by some medieval monastic order, he also praised the weather in that specific place. He even said oenologists have to be very careful and try not to spoil what nature offers them. This truly shows contempt for any type of human participation, and willingness to absolutely connect quality with land. A good plot of land is, needless to say, important but man has intelligence and sensitivity and he is the one taking decisions and implementing them.

In spite of everything, we know not everybody agrees with this and there are people who are central figures and have largely contributed to the evolution of viticulture. There is a very interesting and old document written by the owner of Romanée Conti in Burgundy. And although the vineyard with a specific type of soil and climate that give the wines some particular characteristics, one can see the indomitable will to make everything possible to produce quality wines.

The proposal implied a number of determinants that had to be accepted if I wanted to take part in the project:

1. I would be in charge of the viticultural and oenological technical issues.
2. I would have to buy a plot of land and grow vines.
3. I would have to participate in the building of a joint winery.
4. The production of all the vineyards, for the moment, would be elaborated jointly and only a wine would be made but each of us would have their own label so that the wine could be sold as if were own produced. This would be done until the production of each partner was sufficient to elaborate their own wine separately.
5. Price per bottle would be 1,500₧ (9€ at the current exchange rate, we were in 1985!) for all of us and therefore the quality of the wine would have to match the price.

René told us that the wines that were considered worth the attention of wine critics were expensive wines but, of course, they had to be of excellent quality otherwise they would have no stability on the market.

I took on the challenge although the idea sent a chill down my spine. At the same time I felt flattered by the proposal. I was willing to do my very best. I felt strongly attached to El Priorat through the students I taught at the oenology school. I was as worried as anybody else about the depopulation of the region basically because the youth would leave for the capital and try to earn a decent living.
I was immensely pleased to take part in the odyssey of recovering this rough region, which at the same time has a strong personality.

We have to travel back in time to the mid-eighties, when wine was just another element in gastronomy, more or less, like table wine currently, which has to be good but bought at an affordable price. It was just another food product. We had no tradition of producing or consuming the type of wine René was talking about.
In Spain, the only two well-known regions were La Rioja, for its wines and El Penedès, for its sparkling wines. There was a culture of table wines but we had no culture of quality wines. There were just a few people that knew about great wines and could afford their high prices.

The first time I went to commercialise our wine in 1991, I went to a specialised shop in Tarragona and when I told the owner the price, he said I was crazy. He said that Priorat wines sold in bulk cost 100Pts per litre and if bottled, a maximum of 400Pts per litre: “1,500Pts, you must be joking!”
We had to wait until 1992, when some sommelier courses were first taught and their provincial associations were founded. There were more and more wine tasting courses and wine culture was becoming fashionable. We have to be really thankful to those who promoted this specialty because, without them, our efforts to commercialise quality wines would have been fruitless. We would have failed in our own country, whereas abroad, where there already was a wine culture, we were positively welcome.

Description of the plot
- 1.473 seventeen-year-old vines: a mixture of Grenache noir and Grenache peluda (hairy Grenache)
- Plantation framework: 1.20m x 2.50m
- Density: 3.300 vines/ha
- Vine training: en lyre or double-trellised vines

Aim
To distribute vine vigour among its shoots

Methodology
1. During winter pruning, all the vines were pruned and their shoots were weighed.
Each vine was labelled with the following information:
- Total weight in grams
- The quotient resulting from dividing the total weight (g)/50 (the weight in grams of a wooden shoot with an average length of 1.20m and 10mm in diameter) = number of buds to be kept on each vine.

2. During spring pruning, the number of shoots left was adjusted making sure that it was the number indicated on the label.

3. Every week, shoot growth was measured, from the stage when the shoots reach 60 cm on the trellis wire until their vegetative growth stops (from 17th May to 7th July).

4. The vines were divided into 4 different vigour groups:
Group I: vines with vigour between 100g and 349g (low vigour)
Group II: vines with vigour between 350g and 649g (medium vigour)
Group III: vines with vigour between 650g and 999g (medium-high vigour)
Group IV: vines with vigour between 1000g and 2000g (high vigour)

We will tell you more about the results in the second section of the article.

In the 80s, on a visit to Rueda and Ribera del Duero, I was offered some Pesquera wine that was fantastic. Back then that wine was not well-known yet. How balanced and structured! Mature, with elegant tannins, deep, long. I was pleasantly surprised by it since that was what we were looking for in El Priorat: making wines from mature grapes.
When I had a chance to visit Pesquera, I jumped at it. Alejandro Fernández showed me his vineyard and told me about his new projects, a new vineyard he was working on at a height of more than 1000m. During the course of the conversation, I had the sixty-four-thousand-dollar question in my head so I finally asked “Listen Alejandro, what criteria do you use to know when to harvest?” “Why, I do what my father did, I harvest after La Pilarica!”(a festival celebrated in honour of the patron saint of Zaragoza, on 12th October) replied Alejandro. His answer confirmed the stage of maturity of the grapes expressed in his wine.
On a different occasion, in conversation with some oenologists, the subject of Alejandro’s harvest came up. Some of them said (with a kind of giggle …): “Alejandro gets to the vineyard, takes a few grapes at random, crushes them, rubs his hands with the juice, and, depending on what he sees, he decides to continue harvesting there or he may change to a different plot of land.” The oenologists said Alejandro trusted more his sense of touch than any analytical monitoring. To me that was quite shocking because this is in fact a very rigorous way of getting the same information as with an analysis of phenolic maturity; if your hands are stained red with the juice and are sticky, that surely means that the hypodermic cells have started lysis and the level of sugar is sufficient to start harvesting. Alejandro’s father’s observations were quite extraordinary and represented the conclusions drawn at that time.

Another important figure in the decade of the 80s is Fernando Remírez de Ganuza. With his dedication to achieving quality, he found the different concentration levels (of tannins, colour, aroma, polyphenols …) in the upper and lower part of the same tempranillo grape bunch. So, in order to make the most of this, he cuts each bunch in two so that the upper part is used in the elaboration of reserva wine and the lower part in the elaboration of young wine.
He has also devised a system of static press that works by placing a water bag on orujo that has been previously drained; the bag is left on the orujo for a while so that the weight of the bag itself acts as a static press without any type of energy consumption. With just some gentle pressure and longer time, he manages to get the best of draining.
I think that actions like these showed rebel and subconscious nonconformity when they decided not to abandon their land. They were committed to economic and intellectual effort, creating wines that, in time, have achieved to be among the best.

I do not know if Mariano García has invented anything but I do know that, with his experience, knowledge, and deep sensitivity, he has contributed enormously to improving wine quality. When he comes across a vineyard that can produce quality grapes, he does not care about denominations of origin. He shows that he knows the vineyard and its environment and knows how to work in the vineyard in order to get great wines: tasty, robust, and elegant. Wines that we enjoy drinking. This is Mariano García’s distinctive imprint.
He is probably the most well-known and respected oenologist in Spain. He is able to transmit a strong desire for self-improvement to those of us who are in the field of winemaking.

I would just like to thank them for their contributions. All the best for you three!

I am convinced that things will go on like this for as long as the current generations last, since great wines will go the same way as cuisine, I mean, until not long ago haute cuisine could be found in famous restaurants but, what happens nowadays? We are no longer interested in going to a classic, renowned restaurant. We now look for a given cook, the authentic artist, the one who incessantly tries to find balance and harmony in his/her dishes, apart from an explosion of aromas and a wide variety of textures, always taking into account the quality of the produce. Nowadays we are much more demanding than we were in the past and this is due to social evolution. We evolve all together and although we sometimes believe that the old days were better, food and wine included, we are wrong.

It is interesting to see how man is anchored to this world, even though he meets his individual, personal death. It is absurd to ascribe the exclusivity of particularity to the environment. ART is an asset to the individual, to singularity. Collectiveness leads to tendencies but it can never substitute it. Being a descendant of an art genius does not imply that you are an artist. The way of working can be passed down but one’s creative spirit is unique, on one’s own inside; you either have it or you don’t.

I think it is important to clarify that the environment, terroir (soil and climate), has a direct influence on wine “typology”. This breaks new ground for those of us with an artistic vocation for the making of new wines. But in any “great” wine there is a bonus for excellence that does not belong to any “lineage”; it belongs to the artist that has created it. These are things that we all have to earn, lineage or monarchy mean nothing in this regard.

- Grapevine vigour can be defined, in a simplified way, as the weight of wood (shoots) produced during the vegetative cycle.

- Grapevine productive capacity or vigour is more or less constant if the external parameters it is defined by do not change over time. But the number of shoots left after pruning can vary depending on the adopted criteria.

- Vigour, i.e. the capacity to produce wood, is distributed or “used” as the shoots grow. That is to say, if the weight of all the shoots on a vine is the expression of its vigour, when more or less shoots are retained, we are in fact distributing vine vigour. If many shoots are left, they will grow a little. If a few shoots are left, they will grow a lot.

For example, in a vine of whose vigour is 500: “The weight of all its shoots is 500 grams”

- If, after pruning, 10 shoots are left (500/10), each shoot will weigh 50gr and will measure approximately 1.20m in length. The diameter will be more or less 8 – 10mm.
- If, after pruning, 5 shoots are left (500/5), each shoot will weigh 100gr and will measure more than 2m in length. The diameter will be larger.
- If, after pruning, 20 shoots are left (500/20), each shoot will weigh 25gr, will measure approximately 0.60m in length, and will have a small diameter.

Length has been checked by measuring and weighing shoots of different dimensions and varieties. You can check how we did that in this article.

In short, what we want is to have shoots of 8-10mm in diameter and approximately 1.20m in length at the most in order not to remove shoot tips. In other words, we want to get shoots that weigh approximately 50gr.

Conclusion: Vigour is distributed dividing the weight of the wood cut by 50gr. This will give us the number of shoots that can be retained so that they can show good morphological characteristics and produce quality grapes.

The cause was mainly the use of technology in northern European countries. In those countries sugar was added to increase the wine colour and as a result of this, they did not need to import so much wine from southern Europe.

The reaction to this was collective all over Spain. The so-called “improver” wine varieties such as Chardonnay, Merlot, Cabernet, etc, started to be planted and regrafted. All over the place new wineries were set up by people who did not belong to any winemaking family saga but to other professional fields and were not willing to let their homeland to lose economic power. That was an extraordinary moment! Together with some of the former students at the vocational school in Falset, we planted French grafted vines in the regions of Rueda, Ribera del Duero and some others. In those parts of Castile big plots of land, where beetroots had previously been grown, were now planted with vines.

That was the time when the well-known critic, Mr Robert Parker, wrote that he had found the “Spanish Petrus” in reference to Mr Alejandro Fernández’ Pesquera wine. That provided a morale boost for all those people who, like ourselves, had their hopes pinned on their own incipient projects. Mr Parker has been frequently criticised but I believe that the idea he wanted to express is that quality wines can be made wherever man likes (within limits, of course) and that great wines do not belong only to classic European wine-producing regions, as it was believed then.

We would, nevertheless, like to draw attention to the importance that these regions, like Bordeaux or Burgundy, have had in the development of quality wines all over the world. Back then, we paid constant visits to all the European wine-growing regions. The students in the vocational school, as it is mentioned in the previous article, with their way of acting and that moment in our lives also left their positive imprint on each of us.

1. We know that the environment affects their genetic code, adapting their physiology to the changing weather and soil factors.

It is obvious that the vine will grow better in a fertile than a poor soil and its fruit will grow more but will be less tasty, with less content.

1st conclusion: In different types of soil fertility, different types of grapes are produced.

2. We know that grape morphology is a determining factor that influences the level of wine quality. That is to say:

- Grape clusters that are not compact, with loose berries, have a homogeneous maturation as a whole. This is a really important condition to get quality wines.
- Compact grape clusters, with tightly packed berries, have a very heterogeneous maturation. The berries in the outer part of the cluster ripen earlier than those in the inner part. With this type of grapes it is quite difficult to make excellent wines.

2nd conclusion: Grape morphology affects wine quality.

Taking this deduction as a starting point, how can we make vines to produce grape clusters with loose berries?

3. We have observed that those shoots that have a small diameter, as a general rule, produce small clusters with loose berries.

We did a statistical study that tried to establish a relationship between shoot diameter and grape morphology and we found that:

3rd conclusion:
- Those shoots with a diameter between 7 and 10mm produce, in a high percentage, clusters with loose, medium and small-sized berries.
- Those shoots with a larger diameter mostly produce big, compact clusters.

Taking this into account we should manage to get shoots with a diameter no bigger than 10mm.

How can we get this? I will explain this later on.

When we moved there, unlike most of the people that nowadays come to El Priorat from all over the world, we had no intention of working in the field of winemaking or viticulture. Montse, also a graduated biologist like myself, got a post as a science teacher and I was the responsible for the technical management of the school and also taught. We shared this adventure with our children Sara, Núria, and Adrià. Jordi was born three years later.

El Priorat, an inland and harsh region but with a strong personality, did not offer many prospects back then, at the beginning of the 80s, and the majority of young people left their villages at the slightest chance. The area needed a plan for the future and, like with any good plan for the future, this involved the fields of education and training. And the plan was finally implemented. In 1982, Mr Jaume Ciurana i Galcerán, director of INCAVI (Catalan Institute of the Vine and Wine) proposed us to open a new specialty in the school: Viticulture and Oenology, a three-year course program. This was a specialty that had been very recently created and the school in Falset was one of the first schools in Spain offering the program. You can check the photo gallery of the beginning of the school.

Since we did not know anything about that field, we employed outside teachers so that we could start the new project.

In 1983, a new facility is built next to the main school building where the specialties connected with the winery, laboratory, ageing and tasting will be taught. We devote most of our time to studying, experimenting, and , together with the students, making wine with the grapes harvested in the school’s property but also buying grapes to neighbouring wine makers. This wine was sold to the school’s students and half the benefits were spent on new laboratory material to do experiments and the other half went on the end-of-year trip.

On these trips we visited wineries and vineyards in the main European wine growing regions. Every year we went to a different region: Bordeaux, Burgundy, Piamonte, Champagne, Alsace, Rheingau, Valais, etc. Back then there were no low-cost trips or low-cost accommodation like now, and even the Internet was not available, that meant we had to do all we could so that the trips were as cheap as possible. We travelled by bus, we had our tents and put them up in camp sites where we spent the night. There was a cook in the group, Rafel, who cook us dinner every day after our visits. We had a wonderful time and, what’s most important, those were extremely profitable experiences for the students.

I would like to stress the methodology we used. Most of the academic topics became experimental and illustrative. We designed “experiences” that the students had to do and the most significant were selected to take part in the CIRIT competition organised by Generalitat de Catalunya, which was devoted to research carried out at schools. We won on different occasions and the money awarded also went on the organisation of those trips.

I love teaching and those were wonderful years that I really enjoyed. For me it was a privilege to have been able to somehow contribute in the education of those young people who were so willing to learn. Their parents were mostly wine makers in the region who were quite disappointed with the terrible situation of wine making at the time and they were undergoing a metamorphosis that gradually led them to wish to work the old vineyards of the family, make their own wine and change and revive El Priorat.

From the varieties of Grenache, Cabernet, Merlot, and Syrah, we chose 96 shoots of different lengths at random and the following data was analysed:
- Number of leaves
- Foliar surface
- Shoot length
- Shoot weight
- Shoot diameter

When comparing all these varieties, we could see that the Grenache shoot is the heaviest, the thickest, and the one with the highest foliar surface per shoot length. On the other hand, the Syrah variety shows the lowest values in all these aspects. The Merlot shoots are less heavy than those of Cabernet although they produce a bigger foliar surface.

But we are interested in getting data we can refer to, so we measured the 120cm shoots, which is the ideal length for the type of trellis system we have, and we got the following data: length: 120cm; weight: 46gr; diameter: 8mm at the base; foliar surface: 0.25m2.

The parameters of this first study were the base for our future studies on vigour. Little by little we tried to understand grapevine behaviour and later on we did a very interesting study on these concepts.