Terroir al Limit

Priorat Históric Negre 2021

Grenache and Carignan. Perfume lilt, violet soaked, sweet spice and earth smoke. Lovely.  

In a short space of time, in a place where the kickback of tradition is much more so than other parts of Europe, Dominik Huber has created something unique in Priorat and, arguably, in Spain as a whole. The Catalan hills south of Barcelona are no stranger to critically fêted wine, Huber opts for an ethereal, pared-back attitude to expression that is as much eye-opening as it is radical in the Priorat context. Fine tuned, pure, fresh, Priorat does not have to mean heavy handed, and Huber shows us this in the finest of examples. 

In his pursuit of freshnes, Huber’s vineyard selection has involved a search for high-altitude, old-vine plots that allow him to harvest ripe fruit with retained acidity. He practises biodynamic viticulture and picks as early as possible (he would pick even earlier if the DOCa allowed it). Whole-bunch, nothing destemmed and all the wines are raised in large-format oak and concrete. All this gives Huber’s wines an almost Burgundian-like shape and structure, generating vibrancy and succulence, with the emphasis placed squarely on the mineral rich Priorat soil.