Wine Tastings, Winery Visits and Wine Tours in Priorat

Priorat wine tasting: which wineries to visit

Priorat, in the province of Tarragona, is less than two hours' drive from Barcelona and under an hour from Tarragona. Most of the wine tastings on this page are in DOQ Priorat villages such as Gratallops, Poboleda and Escaladei, and some are in the DO Montsant that surrounds it. A typical visit lasts an hour and a half to two hours, with 5 wines and often cured meats and cheese. Guests have left more than 50 reviews on Winedering.

Which Priorat wineries are worth visiting?

The most booked is Saó del Coster, in Gratallops, the village where Priorat's revival began in the late 1980s. Gratallops has nearly half of the tastings and more than half of the bookings. Three of the six wineries below are there, three in nearby villages:

• Saó del Coster, in Gratallops: a biodynamic winery in a 19th-century building. You taste as you go, from the terrace to the barrel room: 5 reds, at least one from 2016 or earlier.
• Clos Pachem, in Gratallops: a village-centre winery designed by the studio HArquitectes, where the wines age in concrete and ceramic. The 4 wines include a 100% Garnacha and a 100% Cariñena.
• Atavus, in Gratallops: organic grapes and low-intervention winemaking. After a tour of the winery, you taste 7 wines with cured meats, cheese and hazelnuts, in a room with 360-degree views.
• Perinet, in Poboleda: a walk through the vineyard facing the Montsant range, then 3 wines with cheese and cold cuts.
• Celler Pasanau, in La Morera de Montsant: a walk up to a Cabernet Sauvignon plot planted in 1984, which the winery calls the highest vineyard in Priorat, and 5 wines back at the cellar.
• La Conreria d'Scala Dei, in Escaladei: you taste straight from the tanks and barrels, then 4 bottled wines.

What does Priorat mean in wine, and how is Montsant different?

Priorat is both the place and its appellation, the DOQ Priorat, one of only two Spanish appellations with DOCa status (DOQ in Catalan), the other being Rioja. The name comes from the Carthusian monastery of Scala Dei, founded near Escaladei in 1194: its prior ruled the villages around it, and its monks brought vine growing to the area. The wines are mostly reds from Garnacha and Cariñena (Grenache and Carignan), grown on terraces of llicorella, a dark slate. The DO Montsant, created in 2001, almost completely surrounds it, with the same grapes on more varied soils: chalky clay, granitic sand and slate.

Nearly a third of the tastings on this page are at Montsant wineries. Capafons-Ossó, in Falset, farms estates in both appellations and pours 5 wines, older vintages included. Bell Cros, also in Falset, uses granite eggs in its winemaking and serves its wines with cheese and ham. Celler Gritelles, in Cornudella de Montsant, grows its grapes at 450 to 600 metres, and its tasting has a white, an orange wine, a rosé and two reds. In late April or early May, the two appellations pour side by side for three days at the Fira del Vi, Falset's wine fair.

Can you do a Priorat wine tour from Barcelona?

Yes: this list includes several day tours from Barcelona with hotel pickup. Half of them visit three wineries; the others visit one or two and add an olive oil mill, a Priorat village or a stop in Sitges. With a designated driver, you can fit two tastings into a day without leaving Gratallops. One could be the pica-pica at Devinssi, a spread of Catalan nibbles: bread rubbed with tomato, Arbequina olive oil, ham and fuet sausage. Visits happen all year round, nearly a third of them in autumn, when Garnacha and Cariñena are picked from late September into October. Many of these tastings can also be given as a gift: whoever receives the voucher picks the date.