Author: Maria

In 2004, when René worked with his father in Laurona and they were looking for Garnatxa grapes for the wine, they found grapes from a vineyard located in the village of La Figuera. They made wine with those grapes, and they were amazed by it. Since then, every year René visited the cooperative of La Figuera, and he tried a large amount of their wines. He always found them good, very good!

Thanks to a request of René’s father for a new wine, everything was triggered. The task was transferred to his son, and… everything started. René went to see the members of the cooperative, and he proposed the idea of bottling the wine for free in exchange for some kilos of grapes to make a couple of wines. He also asked them for an estate to work it and make a wine for Venus La Universal (the Venus de la Figuera). The members of the cooperative accepted his proposal.
The first bottling of the Sindicat de la Figuera was carried out thanks to Quim Vila, from Vila Viniteca. The wine from this first bottling was sold to him, and it enabled the design and the printing of the label, and the purchase of bottles and boxes (thanks to the prepayment).

In 2014, it was the first harvest, René and his team got to La Figuera. Cold, rain…., and everything was rotten. Everything was rotten. A small part was rescued for René’s projects, but it was not possible to make the Sindicat de la Figuera. They decided to wait another year because the first year of a project is very important and decisive.

In 2015, the 2nd year, once again, it rained… but they couldn’t wait this time. El Sindicat 2015 was a different wine, a more delicate wine, but a wine which indicates the nature of the village of La Figuera. Vila Viniteca finally received the wine, they started to sell it in Barcelona, and they achieved a spectacular position with it.

The collaboration between René Barbier and the Cooperative of La Figuera continued. René helped the members of the cooperative with the technical part, but the wine was made as usual. In 2014, he observed, and in 2015, there wasn’t any significant change, despite the fact of being a way of working different from the one that he was used to (without selecting, all together in the press…). And little by little, the technique and some vine growing concepts, such as the systemic treatments were polished, and these treatments were minimised too (the use of herbicide was eliminated, and the consequence was the vegetation cover, which was so necessary)

And the potential of La Figuera is very big (in both, space and typicality), but the members of the cooperative don’t see any future in this village. The surprise arrived in the shape of an offer from the Cooperative to Venus La Universal to replace them in the project. The cooperative members will still be involved in the grapes part, but the administrative and technical management will be transferred to Venus. A new challenge accepted with excitement and a great renewed enthusiasm.

La Figuera is one the most special areas in Priorat, because it only works a single grape variety, the Garnatxa Negra, and all the possible wine profiles (from the cheapest one to the Grand Cru). It has a common and recognisable style, and especially the height, which gives us a wine with a low profile, and which is very delicate and has a marked acidity.

Sindicat de la Figuera is a renewed old project with a willingness to continue to exist and grow in order to go very far.

Marc and Adrià, Les Cousins. We met them in the facilities of Cims de Porrera, where they make the wines of their project. We wanted to know everything, and, of course, we started from the beginning. It is funny to see their trust and complicity.

They have problems to agree on where they were when the project began (in France or in Priorat). Finally, they agreed on a year, 2000… but then, Adrià, got serious: “In fact, Les Cousins began when we were born, as one might say” They spent our whole childhood together, in Quatretondeta (the village where Marc lived, and where they met in the summer), playing football together, working together in Mas Martinet, in the plot, forced (as they said) … These are some of the experiences that the labels of their wines have reflected. This couple always wanted to do something different, but they didn’t have too much time, and everything required an effort and a commitment that they couldn’t take.

“We knew that we were very young, and we also knew that we were in a world of grown-up people, a world for men, a very classic world…” told us Adrià. “And a very old-fashioned world too” specified Marc. A moment when wines were expensive and rustic, and the two cousins wanted to distance themselves from all this by looking for something which was more fun, more youthful, not so serious.

After many tries, in 2007, they realised that they could make a wine in Porrera, with the vine growers of the Cooperative. They made their first wine, the Sagesse, without knowing it. A great wine, that they wanted to bottle and store. It was not the wine that they expected to make. Marc told us that Les Cousins are always talking about fresh ness, about looking for more drinkable wines, and that 2007 wine was not like that. It was the opposite, it was a superextraction. “It was (…) going against everything (…) a very rustic and forced wine”

With the first Inconscient bottled in 2009 and put on the market in 2010, the situation changed. They got a wine which was much more accessible in every sense, more drinkable and at a very affordable price, ideal for young people, which was their target, what they missed in Priorat.

The Antagonique came later. They wanted to do new things, different things, they wanted to break all the moulds. They already had done it regarding the image of the project, but now they had to do it in the wines too. “And a white wine made from red wine grape varieties, nobody had ever made it” told us Adrià. Marc recalled his experience in Mas Martinet Assessoraments, with Josep Lluis Pérez, during an advising work in Egypt, where, in the desert, all the most popular white grape varieties had been planted, and the variety which best worked was the Garnatxa Negra, obviously

in conditions which were very different from ours. However, based on this experience, they looked for the most productive estates of Garnatxa to make the white wine from red wine grape varieties. The problem came later… with the qualification of the wine, which was very complicated, not only in terms of the legislation, because they were just changing the regulations to allow making white wines from native varieties, but also in terms of the colour, because it was seen as a rosé when it was presented as a white wine, or it was seen as a white wine when it was presented as a rosé. Finally, 2/3 years later, the white wine from red wine grape varieties is a rosé, and this way they don’t have problems.

And all the French names? It was a necessary question, and the answer surprised us because of its simplicity. In Adrià’s opinion: “Why not?” They like the French language, they have been to France, Marc’s partner is French… And it sounds better, more romantic.

The Donzell is an exception. The name El Donzell came out thanks to a good friend, Joan Carbó, who suggested the idea with the terraces of Barcelona in mind. They started to work on this idea by carrying out a blind tasting of more than 20 different vermouths from France, Italy, and Spain, and they concluded that they didn’t like any of them. Then, as they had dismissed the idea of making a vermouth, they started to think of something else, not containing added spirit, macerating fresh and not dry herbs. And they started to carry out tests using a 15.5º rosé as a base, trying different species and herbs… until they finally got the original recipe, which, of course, they didn’t tell us.

And regarding their future… they don’t think too much about it, because they already have a lot of daily work. But years like this year carry some surprises, so without knowing what, when, how, or under which name, they told us that there will be a new wine, outside the DOQ, looking for different things. “Sometimes, when you force things, they don’t work,” said Marc. They have found it this year.
We are eager to know more about it.

Sara & René’s project began thanks to a small inheritance that René received from his grandfather. René really wanted to create a project from the vineyard, without any family pressure, he wanted something of his own. René had been working in Clos Mogador, next to his father, in the winery, since 1992, but he hadn’t got involved in the vineyard part at all. It was a part of the process that he wanted to learn about and work on.

We started to look at vineyards and, finally, we bought a vineyard in the valley of Pesseroles. A neglected vineyard, with 4 badly made terraces, and the upper part, with white grape vines in production. The terraces were transformed into a slope: “I think it must have been the first time in history that this happened” he tells us amused. The idea was to work with old vines, but that vineyard had been neglected for 10 or 15 years, so they had to recover it. It was a huge amount of work in hours, dedication, and patience. They needed to prune, prune… take the last green leaf and prune.

“Because, obviously, when a vine isn’t pruned, it produces wood, and it only produces a new shoot at the end of the growing process… so you start cutting, it produces new shoots, then you cut again below…” he tells us. This way, it took them 4/5 years to rejuvenate the plant. They rejuvenated it enough so that it was productive. It wasn’t very productive, but after all, it was productive.

Sara tells us that plants don’t need to produce too much fruit. In nature, in the forest, where there isn’t any human intervention, a plant only produces a seed to survive and, to avoid having to compete there against the seed, it has two options: the seed can be carried far away from the plant by the wind, or the seed can be covered as a fruit, so that an animal can eat and put it back on the ground some metres or kilometres away from the plant with its excrements. “We love this, but one seed isn’t enough, we need a kg of seeds. Therefore, we need to rejuvenate it (…) It’s like tricking the plant, seducing it so that it produces a lot of fruit”

Obviously, during the first years, they only used the grapes of some of the vines in production, from the upper part that they rented when they bought the plot. Then, as the recovered old vines started to produce grapes, they could increase the number of bottles produced. Now, they are in full production, but it has taken 20 years. The big surprise is that 80/90 % of the vines have survived. It is a very high rate, as they are old vines which were neglected for a very long time.

In the same plot, and always in production, there is the white grape vine. It is a 50/60-year-old vine, one of the oldest white grape vines of the plot. Bellvisos Blanc is the discovery of the white Trepat, a variety which genetically doesn’t have anything to do with the red Trepat, and of which there are just a few hectares between Montsant and Priorat.

In 2002, they planted new Garnatxa, Monestrell, and a few Syrah vines, and in 2008, they started to make the Partida Pedrer wine. At the beginning, it seemed a second wine from young vines. It was difficult to define. After some years of testing, in 2014, after having made the Dido, La Solució Rosa, and after a conversation with Josep Roca during which he asked why we didn’t make rosés in Priorat, René decided to change the situation, and he tried to make a rosé. In 2014 and 2015, both rosés and red wines were made. “In 2016, the red wine I made was very bad, and the rosé was very good! And since 2017, do you know what… let’s only make rosés. But in 2018, I carried out another test with carbonic maceration” he tells us. That was a turning point for both, the red wine, which was lighter and with less colour, and the rosé, which used the most concentrated part of the vine. And they have kept this until now.

Sara and René’s project is a project that they have always felt like an opportunity to investigate: “It’s our R+D” says René. A project in which they have felt free because it is their own project, and they aren’t accountable to anyone.
One of the fundamental pillars on which the project was based since the very beginning, is the fact that they wanted to get very old wines. During the first 10 years, they spent all their profits from a winery consultancy in Ribeira Sacra directly in S&R. And the day they stopped consulting that winery was the day when they started selling the wine. 5/10 years of ageing, small bottles (now it is 7 years) and 15/20 years, the magnum wines. A very important part of their production is bottled in this format.

And another pillar was that they wanted to sell the wines through a different distribution channel, and it is one of the remaining issues on which they are still working. Now, there are twenty high level restaurants with an exclusive use of the project, and the intention is to supply the remaining bottles directly to the final consumer. They are expensive wines, so it is a way to supply the wines at a more affordable price.
Maybe in a near future it will be possible to visit the vineyards and the winery in situ. It is a possibility that they are working on, and it will enable them to show you the beauty of these special vineyards.

Venus la Universal started in 1999 because of the need of Sara Pérez to find a different wine expression. It was the last year of the 1990s when she, together with her parents and her brother Adrià, focused on the extraction, the ripening, the concentration… until reaching maximum levels.

Sara lived in Falset at that time, and when she came back home in the evenings, there was a burst of light! The shape of the wine bottles that she drank, Burgundy, not Bordeaux. Her preferential varieties, the old Mediterranean varieties instead of the improving ones (Cabernet, Merlot…) which were supported in Priorat. She discovered the Carinyena and the Syrah, two sides of the same coin. Depth, reduction, mystery… not like the Garnatxa with so much fruit and splendour. She liked wines with more tension, more elegance, more fluency… The DO Monsant (which hadn’t been recognised as such yet) was a different area, an aera of skins and with a different light, cooler. A path that she wanted to explore, a counterpoint in Priorat. Venus 99. She wanted to make a blend of Carinyena and Syrah, even though both are very reductive varieties. Each one of them had been traditionally blended with Garnatxa to provide the oxygen that they lack, but these two, alone, were a risky bet. The Carinyena needed old vines, which was even more difficult, because the Montsant area, which is a flatter area, was worked with tractors, the vines were younger, only those with small plots, of 500 / 800 vines, kept the old vines. Therefore, Venus was not the result of a plot, but the result of a search. A search for beauty.

“And we didn’t have a name” tells us Sara. “We remodelled the house… but we didn’t have a name. In June 2000, when it was time to bottle, I went to Piedmont and Tuscany (with more vine growers), and there, in Florence, we visited the Uffizi Gallery and we saw “The Birth of Venus”. I was so thrilled, and I said…. VENUS. This is what I am looking for”

And when she came back, she had to tell it to her partner, Xavi, a friend of her. And, by chance, his mother had a “Birth of Venus” in her bedroom… Everything seemed to square.

And where does “la Universal” come from? We ask her. And she tells us that they used a plot of Sara’s grandparents, where she had a vegetable garden, to plant some vines. The winery didn’t even have 50m2. At the beginning of this century, during the modern innovations, everything related to traditional products became more important with names like Industrial, Universal… And we thought that it was a good idea in that case, so it was called that way. First, Companyia Universal, then Òrbita Venus, and finally, Venus La Universal.

And you, René? When did you get involved in the project? We ask this to René.

He tells us that it was an incredible coincidence, because when Sara started in 1999, just a year before the recognition of the DO Montsant, he and his father started a project in Laurona, which is also in the DO Montsant. My experience with Laurona was very difficult. There were wines that he didn’t know, the worms came… But this project allowed him to discover the area. He started to work with Sara first in La Vinya del Vuit (with some friends), and later in Sara & René (the project of the couple in Priorat). And, in a difficult time for Venus, just during the first of the recent economic crisis, the one of 2001 (after the attack on the Twin Towers) he got involved in Venus as a partner. It was in 2005, and soon he was in charge of the winery part. However, it was not until 2006 that he started to understand the wines, the Dido, and the Venus.

Then, as he had started to make white wines in Priorat (with the Nelín), and it was something especially exciting for him, he proposed to extend the family with the white Dido, in 2007. They discovered the Macabeu, a variety similar to the Carinyena because of the discredit that it had, and because it is reductive too. Finally, at the same time, it has a great and interesting ageing capacity. “The discovery of the Macabeu variety was a gift” he tells us excited.

And, talking about discoveries, the granite. It was a surprise, which everybody knows now, the ageing capacity that it brings to wines. An early Eneas or a Dido 2005/2006 resists because of its acidity. In Priorat, wines resist because of its structure. Therefore, this discovery enabled us to understand that Dido wasn’t a second wine. It was another wine, and it was a great wine too, as good as Venus, but different.

For Sara and René Venus is also an open door to experimentation, an opportunity to solve all those doubts arising on their way, as they aren’t limited by the land and small productions like in Priorat. And this is how they take advantage of the climatic diversity and the different soils of the DO. Venus, old Carinyena vines on a calcareous-clay land, deep soils. Calcareous land, Dido white wine; Dido rosé, calcareous-clay land again; and Dido red wine, granite, and mostly Garnatxa.

And the plot wines like Venus de Cartoixà, Venus de la Figuera, Venus de les Pells, Venus del Granit (the last two wines aren’t on the market yet), which are linked to a specific variety and a specific plot.