Located about 15 miles inland from the Mediterranean coastal town of Tarragona, with a climate best described as “harsh”—bitingly cold winters and dry, hot summers—Priorat is often described as an “extreme” terroir. Its vineyards are perched at high altitudes in distinctive-looking soils of fractured slate called llicorella, and the earliest wine-growers to brave its rocky, terraced slopes were Carthusian Monks of the Scala Dei (“God’s ladder”) abbey. The name “Priorat” is Catalán for “priory,” in honor of those intrepid 12th-century monks.

Yet for all its history, Priorat wine in the modern era was largely forgotten, and its vineyards mostly abandoned, until a handful of producers led a comeback. In 1979, René Barbier, a native of Tarragona, convinced a band of like-minded aspirants to join him in exploring the rocky bluffs of Priorat. Having trained in Burgundy and worked in Alsace and Bordeaux, Barbier introduced the concept of the clos (small, enclosed, walled-in vineyard) and soon this handful of dreamers had their own mini-estates bearing names Clos Mogador, Clos Erasmus, Clos de l’Obac and Clos Martinet. 

As savvy Spanish wine collectors know, Clos Mogador remains the Gold Standard, presenting the local Garnacha and Cariñena alongside Syrah and Cabernet—immense power, incredible polish, and uncanny freshness are this wine’s calling cards. Limit two per person!