Celler Son Prim

Cantina e Vini

OUR STORY At the beginning of the 90s, Jaime Llabrés planted a small plot of land with a mixture of vine stock, including Prensal, Chardonnay, Chenin Blanc, Syrah, Cabernet and Merlot, with the aim of seeing how they performed in Mallorca’s climate and soil. To make wine from the first fruit of the different varieties, we used small stainless steel tanks with a cooling system, placed under a very large carob tree. Interestingly, the results were very satisfactory. The ageing was done in barrels resting comfortably in the cool basement of a garage in Palma. This venture produced some barrels of very good quality wine which was bottled, and a few barrels of vinegar too, which were more suitable for using as salad dressing. Around the middle of the 90s, all the family were involved in planting new vines, including the young Jaime J. Llabrés. At five years of age he began to discover the world of wine and was growing at the same rate as the vineyard. Nowadays, he looks after customer relations and supervises the general running of the winery and vineyard. A few years ago the Son Prim winery in the village of Sencelles came to the end of its life. Its two ‘cups’ of living stone and the big oak casks were too difficult to update. The best solution was to build a new winery. We started building work in 2003, in the middle of the countryside next to the new fields of vines, and we finished just in time to get in the first harvest of 2004. We’ve now got a comfortable space for fermentation and an underground space for ageing, resulting in magnificent wines. A new winery has been born, and a new bottle of wine.

The first plants were trained as espaliers, on a 2.4m x 1.25m frame. The height of this frame was planned to maximise leaf area. The soil is a hard red clay which retains rainwater and where a good root system will develop. In some parts there are some spectacular ‘Bolls’ or boulders, some as big as melons, which in summer help to maintain a steady temperature and retain humidity. The climate of this area is ideal for growing vines. With the new plantings we are using a lower frame of 2.4m x 1m to compensate for the reduction in the number of grapes per plant, with the aim of producing more concentrated fruit. All the vineyards are irrigated but this is mainly during the first stages of growth. And as for the traditional enemies of vine-growing, we meet them with equally traditional methods: flowers of sulphur, copper and Bordeaux mixture. Prevention is better than cure.