Silicon Valley, a region located in the southern part of the San Francisco Bay Area in northern California, USA, is known as the global centre of innovation and technological entrepreneurship and is home to some of the world’s largest technology companies, including Apple, Google, Facebook and Tesla. The concentration of talent, resources and companies in the region has driven the creation and development of new technologies and business models. Similarly, if we look far back to the Middle Ages, the Carthusian monasteries were the R&D&I centres of the time. The monks, as well as taking care of books and preserving knowledge, protected the vineyards better than anyone. Since wine was an important part of the Christian liturgy, any new monastery that was built immediately had vines planted and, little by little, techniques were developed to improve production. The Carthusian Order, for example, is the origin of the renowned Priorat wines. They were the first to recognise and take advantage of the qualities of the Llicorella terrain for vine cultivation and winemaking. It is in honour of this legacy that La Conreria was born, a small winery in the emblematic Escaladei (the village where the Carthusian monastery of the same name is located) and where three friends (a winemaker, a teacher and a priest) have been working to reflect the history and wine culture of the area with their own wines since 1997.
With a total of 26.5 hectares of vineyards, owned and leased, spread across different parts of the Priorat, they produce a wide variety of quality wines from a careful selection of vines. Specifically, La Conreria Les Brugueres Negre is a coupage of Garnacha and Syrah from their own vineyards spread over different plots with different characteristics and cultivated following the principles of organic agriculture. In the winery, the two varieties ferment separately in stainless steel tanks with native yeasts and a controlled temperature. Then 70% of the wine is aged in 300-litre oak barrels and the rest in stainless steel tanks for 10 months.
Once ready to be sold, La Conreria Les Brugueres Negre is a good example of the essence of the D.O.Q. Priorat in its smoothest version. These expertise have been passed down through the centuries since the first Carthusian monks settled in their “Silicon Valley of wine”.