2017 Álvaro Palacios L'Ermita Velles Vinyes Priorat

There is even more Cariñena in this warm vintage, and the varietal breakdown of the 2017 L'Ermita comes to a majority of Garnacha but with a notable 20% Cariñena and some 2% of white grapes. It fermented with indigenous yeasts in oak vats and matured in oak barrels of different sizes for 16 months. The grapes were picked on the 18th of October, which is extremely late considering that 2017 was their earliest harvest ever! It has a surprisingly high percentage of Cariñena, the highest ever for L'Ermita, yet the wine feels like the essence of a Mediterranean Garnacha—floral, expressive, open, insinuating, refined and elegant. It has great depth and refined tannins and feels light on its feet, yet it's full of inner power, intense and persistent. It's detailed, nuanced, clean, transparent, focused and pure. The flavors are very precise and clean and the aftertaste extremely long. A truly great L'Ermita, again, transcending the conditions of the vintage. They got 15.2 hectoliters per hectare. 2,900 bottles were filled in May 2019. This will be the first wine to carry the new Priorat classification Gran Viña Clasificada, the equivalent of a Grand Cru in Burgundy.

Álvaro Palacios has to be one of the largest producers in Priorat as well as one of the quality leaders of the appellation, a combination of quality and quantity that is unusual in most parts of the country. It's one of the reasons why the Priorat appellation is a leader in defining a hierarchy of its wines through the origin—regional, specific village or part of it (paraje or lieu-dit) and single vineyard. Annual output is 400,000 bottles.

2017 and 2018 are almost opposites as far as the weather is concerned: 2017 was warm and dry, and 2018 was milder and wetter. I tasted mostly 2017s, and only the entry-level Camins del Priorat was from 2018. 2017 was the earliest harvest in recent times, and the French grapes were picked in late August. However, the 2017s felt fresh and quite elegant and didn't show any heat; they felt elegant but Mediterranean at heart. I found the collection to be phenomenal, very much transcending the vintage.