Terroir al Límit Les Tosses 2016

Why is this Wine so Yummy?

Green capsule (Vi d’altura or equivalent of Grand Cru). There are two Vi d’alturas, or pinnacle wines, that are produced here: Les Tosses and Les Manyes. These are Terroir al Límit’s finest Priorats, as tasted through the prism of Cariñena (for Les Tosses) and Garnatxa (forLes Manyes). In our opinion, they are simply two of the greatest wines emanating from Spain. Both are naturally fermented and aged in large French oak vats for two years. The 2-hectare Les Tosses vineyard sits on a stony ridge to the northeast of the village of Torroja, at the incredible altitude of 650 metres. It is one of the very few ancient vineyards at this height and has deep, black slate soils. The bush-grown vines face east, like watchmen guarding the valley, and are more than 90-years-old (almost all Cariñena with a small percentage of co-planted Garnatxa). The density of planting is 6,605 plants per hectare. Dominik Huber only uses the best portion of this ‘Grand Cru’ site for this bottling, the rest going to the village wine. The fermentation was 100% whole bunches with indigenous yeasts, and pressing occurred half-way through the fermentation and then the wine went to a 1,200 litre Stockinger cask for 20 months ageing. Luis Gutiérrez sums the wine up beautifully below.

About Terroir al Límit

Since first trying Dominik’s wines a few years back I’ve been searching for other Priorat wines with this much personality and beauty. It’s been a struggle. I’ll be stashing some of these for my 2nd daughter’s birth year … well that’s the excuse I’ll be using!

A trip to Priorat in 2000 started a, thus far, 17-year adventure for German Chef turned wine farmer, Dominik Huber. As Dominik speaks of his time in Priorat, the lands, it’s people, and his wines you get a distinct impression that he has found a balance in life that many would envy.

Half his time spent in his isolated mountainous vineyards of Priorat, half his time, moving around the world sharing his passion for the wines of Priorat. The former offering calm, the later, the contact with vibrant people and places of the world, satisfying the joy of experience, in addition to helping disrupt his thinking, helping him push his grape growing and winemaking further.

A few years ago Dominik held a Masterclass in Melbourne for a lucky few. Wine Decoded was there to capture his thoughts on Priorat, his vineyards, wines and much more. Now we share it with you in the film below. Read on for more of our thoughts.

🎥 Watch or 🎧 Listen

In the Vineyard

Dominik’s Vineyards are in the centre of Priorat around the town of Torroja. Like all of the great wine producers, there is a strong focus on the vineyard. Simple: a healthy environment, results in healthy vital and vibrant grapes that are just desperate to be turned into delicious wine.

In the Winery

His approach to natural wine is proactive, applying great technical rigour to ensure he guides his fruit to deliver its full potential. Disdain, is perhaps, a nice way to describe his feelings for “lazy” natural winemakers who don’t put in the work and make bad wine.

No, Brett is not accepted in his wines, and, hygiene is important. Yes, analysis is used to determine the status of wines and make informed decisions. Oxidative maturation is OK in its place, with Huber’s preference to apply it to his whites and not his reds. Oxidised wine is not OK. The whites are still fresh, fragrant, and loaded with intrigue. If you tasted them out of a black glass in a dark room, the textures are closer to a light red, than a “modern” white. Don’t get confused or put off by this, the whites are superb wines, vibrant with great flavours.

No doubt Huber’s background as a chef has influenced his desire to make wine that is the perfect accompaniment to the regional Catalan cuisine, heavy on seafood, often simple, always tasty, typically not made from the prime ingredients, as the Italian’s say, Cucina Povera or poor people’s food.

Like many of the wine regions in the New World, it’s in a state of rapid evolution, trials of sites, varieties, historic and new winemaking techniques are taking place. Many wines are excessively alcoholic, over-oaked and oxidised. Those that are good, like Dominik’s, are the jewels of Priorat. The region is going through wine puberty again.

Huber has stuck to the local varieties, Granatxa and Cariñena for the reds. Garnatxa Blanca, Macabeo, Pedro Ximénez and Muscat of Alexandria for the whites. They are a revelation! In addition to his own wines, he has a side project working with like-minded growers to produce wines under a co-operative model. They are the perfect introduction to Priorat.

Some, ask if there is a typical style of wine produced in Priorat. I always find this an interesting question. A senior member of the wine industry asked me if there was a typical style of Pinot produced in the Yarra Valley. At the most basic level, my response “The Yarra Valley is over 50km square, there are so many different sites planted to Pinot Noir some warmer, other colder, elevation, aspect, soil types, all of these things vary dramatically throughout the region and different fruit results.” All this was without the influence of vine age, viticultural and winemaking practices. Even in a strip as thin, and, as well defined, as the Côte d’Or in Burgundy 50km x 1km there is an incredible array of different styles of Pinot and Chardonnay being produced. Priorat at about 25km x 25km, has considerable diversity to its fruit sources.

Moving past “typical” I’d love to see us looking at wine at face value and asking simply is it good, not, does it taste like Grenache or Pinot.

Dominik has chosen a path of restraint, elegance and uses only the traditional local varieties. Which he asserts are better suited to the region with their ability to retain acid and tannin profiles. I certainly think they have the advantage of vine age & balance on their side too. It will be interesting to see if variety experiments extend beyond the few French varieties and how they perform over time.

One thing is clear, the wines of Terroir al Límit are very good, perhaps at the top level with Les Manyes and Les Torres, great!

The surprising news from Terroir al Limit is that they have sold all their oak foudres (but one for the white/orange Pedra de Guix!) to focus on aging their wines in concrete and for a shorter time! They started this years ago, and it was accelerated by their experience in Montsant (Terroir Sense Fronteres) to the point that there was hardly any oak in the 2019 and nothing in 2020! They don’t have a destemmer here (or in Montsant), and all their wines ferment with indigenous yeasts, so the wines are about naked expression of the grapes and places, wines of great purity.

Luis Gutiérrez

Where in the World is Terroir al Límit?

Terroir al Límit 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. Since then, plantings have increased dramatically with noble French varieties, Cabernet, Merlot and Shiraz dominating.