Priorat NORAY 2005 red (pack of 6); Bottle price € 12.50

The price of this wine with a vintage of 2020 or so costs €23 or thereabouts.
Wines from Priorat normally cost a multiple of that. We visited the village of Falset, the center of Priorat, you might say. It is full of wineries where you can taste and buy. It is not surprising if you discover that you have just bought a €50 wine without thinking, those prices are so normal there.........

This wine has been aged in oak barrels for 14 months. Grape varieties Garnatxa and Merlot.

Now: price per bottle of year 2005 is € 12.50 and packed in boxes of 6

From 12 bottles, including a free special “tool” for corks based on age.

Below more about the winemaker and his background:

Roca de les Dotze

R oca de les Dotze is a small family business dedicated to the production of organic wines. The estate is located under the spectacular cliffs of "Serra de Montsant" with a total area of ​​450,000 square meters and the average altitude is 700 meters above sea level. There are 130,000 square meters of vines with a total of 45,000 plants including the following varieties: Red Grenache, Carignan, Syrah, Cabernet Sauvignon, Merlot, White Grenache, Pedro Ximenez and Viogner. They have been making wine since 2003 and all their wines are made from their own certified organic grapes.

Mountain landscape with ancient villages

The Priorat wine region in Catalonia is a small and isolated region about a two-hour drive south from Barcelona. It consists of vast hilly landscapes, high mountain massifs and centuries-old churches, farms and villages such as Escaladei, Torroja and Masroig. And it is surrounded on three sides by mountain ranges: in the west by the impressive Montsant (= sacred mountain) mountain massif, in the east by the Sierra de Llaberia and in the south by the Els Ports nature park. It is not without reason that this beautiful area in Eastern Spain is also called the “Tuscany of Spain”.

Priorat

This fascinating rugged mountain landscape contains numerous vineyards that grow grapes on narrow terraces on steep mountain slopes. Which means that everything has to be done manually. Also harvesting. Wine has been grown in the Priorat wine region in Catalonia since the Middle Ages. However, when the vines in this isolated area of ​​eastern Spain were destroyed by a plague of lice in the 19th century, no more wine was made for a long time.

Until around 1980, an energetic group of young winemakers started investing in this wine region south of Barcelona so that wine production in the Priorat wine region could develop again.

The abundance of sunshine, the characteristic slate soil and the investment of an energetic group of young winemakers has ensured that the Priorat wine region in Catalonia today produces fantastic wines. Which have achieved international fame under the DOQ Priorat quality mark.

Vino Sanitas managed to obtain a small batch from 2005 and there was also some 2004 among them. Not only the wine is old, but also the cork. Special corkscrews have been developed for this purpose. If you want to order at least 12 bottles of this wine with balls, you will receive a free corkscrew that has been specially developed to remove delicate corks from the bottle as undamaged as possible.

(Value around €10)