Perelada toasts its centenary at Espacio Ideal

The Ideal Digital Arts Center, located in Poblenou, Barcelona, has transformed this weekend into a piece of Alt Empordà and, more specifically, into a mirror of the main assets that the Peralada family group has owned in this town in Girona for one hundred years. It was in 1923 when the Mateu family, dedicated to the iron trade and founders of Hispano Suiza, bought Peralada Castle to house their art collections and revive the winemaking activity of an old winery located under the Carme convent, adjacent to the castle, which had been founded by Carmelite monks in the 14th century.

One hundred years later, Perelada has become the main winery of the DO Empordà, with a production of 5 million bottles of wine and cava and a turnover of 20 million euros in 2022. To commemorate the centenary, siblings Javier, Miguel, and Isabel Suqué Mateu have brought some of the treasures they keep in the castle to the Ideal space, such as paintings, incunabula books, 12th-century capitals, 15th-century glass pieces, or the costumes worn by the Queen and Rigoletto in the opera The Fairy Queen, performed at the Peralada Festival. All these objects make up an exhibition that can be visited before participating in an original immersive tasting to discover five of the wines produced by the winery.

It is an immersive tasting because, in addition to tasting the wines, taking advantage of the audiovisual technology of the Ideal Barcelona space, visitors are transported to different areas of the Peralada resort, such as the Gothic cloister of Carme, the interior of the new winery designed by the RCR studio and inaugurated in 2022, the castle library ---which houses more than 100,000 valuable books---, the vineyards and landscapes of Empordà ---and especially the Garbet estate, located facing the sea--- and the gardens where the Peralada Festival is held. The visual journey through these five areas is accompanied by a very special voice-over: it is the tramuntana, the characteristic wind of the area, who addresses the public and reveals some of the most outstanding elements of the family's hundred years of presence in the Empordà town.

"This commemoration is a tribute to the generations that have preceded us and who have been able to fulfill the dream of revitalizing Empordà and turning Peralada into an art center," said Javier Suqué, president of the group, on Thursday night during the inauguration of the exhibition and the immersive tastings, which will continue until this Sunday. According to the businessman, the goal of the generation currently leading the company is for "Peralada to become a prestigious destination at a European level." To achieve this, one of their main contributions has been the construction of the new winery, an asset conceived to "achieve better wines," but, especially, "as a legacy" that will remain for the future and will contribute to making the DO Empordà "become the benchmark it deserves."

The goal of the generation currently leading the company is for "Peralada to become a prestigious destination at a European level"

Of the five million bottles that Perelada markets each year, three million are cava and two million are wine, although in terms of value, that is, in revenue generation, both segments are balanced, each contributing 50% of the business. 32% of production is exported, although Suqué has set the goal of increasing foreign sales to 60% in three years.

The wine division of Grup Peralada, called Perelada & Chivite, integrates other wineries located in other producing regions such as Priorat, Rioja, Malaga, and Navarra, totaling 16 million bottles, 500 hectares of owned vineyards, and a turnover that in 2022 rose to 64 million, an 8% increase. Thus, the Catalan family group includes the brands Chivite and Gran Feudo (Navarra), Viña Salceda (Rioja), Casa Gran del Siurana and Cims de Porrera (Priorat), La Melonera (Serranía de Ronda), Oliver Conti and Privat. In addition, the group owns the company Celler del Pescador (formerly called Cavas del Ampurdán), producer of the best-selling wines Gran Pescador and Cresta Rosa, of which it markets more than 4 million bottles.

In total, Grup Peralada invoiced 220 million euros in 2022, a figure that includes income from wine companies, the hotel and gastronomic sector, and especially, the gaming business, with casinos in Barcelona, Peralada, and Tarragona, and others located in Argentina, Chile, and Uruguay.