Mas Doix ‘Salanques’ Garnatxa 2019

Why is this Wine so Yummy?

Salanques is a Catalan name for Salix (in latin): the Ilex or Holm Oak tree grows plentifully along the banks of Riu Siurana. The partida, or place name ‘Barranc de Salanques’ means ‘the steep gorge full of Holm Oak’. Composition is Garnatxa 65%, Carinyena 25%, Syrah 10%. The fruit comes from old vines with 10 metres of vine root depth, yielding 300-500 grams/vine or 2 vines/bottle. Before crush it’s berry selected.

Soil: Hills of “llicorella”, Paleozoic laminar slate, at an altitude of 350-450 meters above sea level.

Climate: Mediterranean with a continental trend. High thermal contrast between night and day.

Elaboration: Certified organic viticulture. Harvesting by hand into 10 kg crates. Grape by grape classification using a double selection table. Fermentation of destemmed grapes in stainless steel tanks and wood barrel.

The acidity of Mas Doix wines is terrific: Salanques typically has around 6.5 g/l TA and pH of 3.2

Aging: 14 months in a new fine-grained barrel of French oak (50% new and 50 % two-year-old barrel). Bottling: 16,000 bottles without clarification or filtration.

Salanques is purply and floral, tangy berries over a memory of sweet soil. The mouthfeel is of excellent sweet tannin, edged by cold mineral rock freshness giving the wine a straightening line. There’s an OJ jolt and between the minerality and acidity it’s all just ‘tang, tang, tang’. With time in bottle, Salanques takes on a deep soft earthen ‘shroom perfume, expressing the honied mineral of llicorella in a gently structured wine of great, poise, fresh and mineral with fine acid.

About Mas Doix

Mas Doix are a family producer of village-specific Priorats from Poboleda in the north-east. They live and breathe (and work very hard at) the “nothing’s easy in Priorat, but if you get it right, it’s magic” mantra. Old vines, deep roots, low crops, complex aromas, longer and deeper wines. Mas Doix have 18 hectares of own vineyards in Poboleda, protected between the Monstant and Serra de Motlló ranges, and cooled by northeasterly breezes. Mas Doix recovered their fruit from the desperate resort of the co-ops in 1999 and the family wine business effectively dates from 1998, although the family’s vineyard holdings and involvement in the Priorat wine industry date to the 1850s.

Today Sandra Mora Doix, Joan Doix’s granddaughter, has a degree in viticulture and enology and is making the family wines.

Sandra refers to winemaking as elaboration, as if the vines have a message and it is her job to transmute it, the voice of nature, into the wine. The life force of the old vines produces precious fruit that is still breathing, evolving from barrel to bottle and into the glass. When it reaches the palate, energy commingles, cells split and transform. We drink it and our consciousness is enlivened, our senses are more aware. This is the great gestalt of wine. It beckons us to stop and explore it, and life, more deeply. It says, “Come, sit with me. Let me tell you the story of my life.”

In the Vineyard

Every great wine begins its journey on the vine, where the grape is most important. That is why we dedicate all the care and attention we can give to our vineyards, whether they are young or centuries old. We practice strictly organic viticulture with biodymic practices that ensure perfect harmony between the environment, the vineyard and our labour. Planted in the “llicorella” slate hills by people who never stopped believing, each one of these vines rewards us with a yield of grapes of the finest quality.

The cultivation of all of our vines, vineyard by vineyard, variety by variety, is exclusively performed by hand. We harvest the grapes, picking them by hand from the vine, and once they reach the winery, we select them one by one with a critical eye and serene hands.

Historically, vineyards of the Priorat were planted up and down the steep slopes known as costers. Salanques de Joan Doix is no exception. Its altitude varies from 350-600 meters. The soils are predominantly llicorella, the local name for the ancient slate soils, hardened and broken into pieces over millennia. Tiny hand hewn rock walls known as marge helped protect the land from erosion. Tending the vineyards continues to be challenging because tractors tip over. Even the mules sometimes struggle to keep their balance and owning them is sometimes a luxury. So for now the Doix family relies on their strength and fortitude to get work done. At least now there are cars because in the old days the trip from home in the village to the vineyard was 30 minutes or more on foot, depending on how much they had to carry with them.

Because of their age, the old vines were never irrigated. The people who planted them had little more than a wagon, a shovel, some pruning shears and methods learned through history and observation. The people hand watered new vines for a year or so to help establish roots. Then it was up to the vines to adapt to their place naturally. They would send their roots deep into the earth, sometimes as far as 20 meters (66 feet), to find sustenance and sanctuary when surface water was scarce. A grower’s merit is measured by their vine’s roots.

The vineyards of the 1902

The Priorat’s vinyes velles, old vines, are defined by the DOQ (Denomenation of Qualified Origin) with 75 years of age or more. As of 2020, there were 2,088 hectares (5,160 acres) of old vines scattered throughout the region. After so many years, the dry, hot climate and rocky soils of the Priorat have formed an enduring relationship with the autochthonous Garnatxa (Grenache) and Carinyena (Carignan). Salanques de Joan Doix was planted to Carinyena because the variety takes time to mature and longevity was the family’s objective. Five generations later, the relationship between the Doix family and their vines remains binding, impassioned and committed.

The original vineyard was planted in 1850 but only a few of those original vines survived because phylloxera destroyed the vineyards of the Priorat at the end of the 19th century. The Doix family replanted with American rootstock in 1902 and once the roots were established, the family grafted them with cuttings from the surviving autochthonous Carinyena. The oldest vines occupy approximately 1 hectare (2.5 acres) of the vineyard.

At first the old vine Carinyena is mysteriously dense, powerful if not a little wild. It embraces the Priorat terroir with penetrating articulation. Suddenly it arrives at the back of the palate radiant with velvety blackberry preserves, juicy blueberries and currant. Then nuances of wild herbs, ink, pencil lead, licorice and bittersweet chocolate emerge. The density expands with finesse and restraint, ensuring the finale is persuasively long and worthy of applause. The collective of nature, culture and time becomes clear. It is spoken in the language of the senses. All the aromas and flavors become a transcendental journey into a place where the vine’s invitation can be understood…

In the Winery

The elaboration is performed with the minimum possible intervention, fermenting the grapes in temperature controlled stainless steel vats, as well as in a wooden vat and open barrels depending on the variety and quality of the grape. The process ends with the aging in barrels and its subsequent coupage.

The wines are handled by gravity, and bottled without fining or filtration. The entire wine making process, from the harvest to the coupage, follows a strict elaboration process that respects our dedication to the terroir, the fruit and our vocation.

Sandra explores Carinyena during aging in barrel

The 2017 Vintage at Mas Doix

Where in the World is Mas Doix?

Mas Doix is in Priorat just south of Barcelona in Catalunya off the coast of the Mediterranean Sea. It’s long history with wine started almost 1,000 years ago. In modern times it was consigned to producing bulk wines through co-operatives. It’s renaissance, started in the mid-1980’s, with several producers pushing to make quality wines.