On October 22, 2019, the force of the Francolí river swept everything away. The Rendé Masdéu winery disappeared due to the flood, but, paradoxically, this tragic event also brought it to fame, as dozens of headlines were published and a great wave of solidarity was unleashed to help the owning family not only recover the bottles that were not broken ---the so-called mud wine---, but also to move forward. As it has been. In addition to discovering Rendé Masdéu, this event, incidentally, served for many citizens to know or be able to locate on the map the Conca de Barberà Designation of Origin, one of the smallest in Catalonia in terms of market share, but with a great deal of history.
Located north of Tarragona and flanked by the Francolí and Anguera rivers, Conca de Barberà is a very well-defined wine territory surrounded by mountain ranges such as the Prades mountains. Towns such as Barberà de la Conca, Montblanc, Poblet, Rocafort, Sarral, l'Espluga de Francolí and Blancafort are part of the designation of origin, which currently totals 2,875 hectares of vineyard surface, cultivated by 647 winegrowers.
Wine has been made in Conca since before the Roman Empire, but it has traditionally been a bulk wine production area where all activity was in the hands of large cooperatives established at the beginning of the 20th century and which built large modernist wineries, known as the cathedrals of wine. Over the years, however, this has been changing and there are now 23 wineries in the area that produce 8,000 hectoliters of wine, now, largely bottled. A driving force behind this flourishing of new wineries has been the Viver de Celleristes, located in Barberà de la Conca, in the first cooperative building in Spain, built in 1903. More than fifteen wineries have been born in this incubator for entrepreneurs in the wine world since 2007 and some have achieved great commercial success.
In Catalonia, in terms of consumption, the DO Conca de Barberà, according to Incavi, has a market share of only 0.4% and is at the bottom of the Catalan DOs along with DO Tarragona (0.3%) and DO Alella (0.2%). In total, the eleven designations of origin in Catalonia account for a 41.5% share of total wine consumption.
But volume, in the world of wine, is not the most important thing, quite the opposite. La Conca de Barberà has a great treasure: an autochthonous variety practically exclusive to the area, Trepat, which has traditionally been used to make rosé wines, but which now, thanks to the impulse of new wineries, also demonstrates its great potential in reds. In 2004 there was only one winery that made Trepat reds and now there are about fifteen.
Until recently, Trepat was seen as a minor variety, but now it is experiencing a sweet moment thanks to consumers' preference for agile, pleasant and easy-to-drink wines, without renouncing elaborations that seek complexity and aging. The production of wines with this grape variety has gone from 42,300 liters (56,400 bottles of 0.75 cl) to 151,521 (just over 200,000 bottles), that is, it has tripled between 2007 and 2019. "Over the years, the Conca has carried out a process to define its identity towards Trepat; 19 of the 23 wineries have qualified wines with this variety, whether red or rosé," explains Bernat Andreu, from the Carles Andreu winery and former president of the DO.
In the Conca, however, we not only find Trepat, there are other typical Catalan varieties and also, at the end of the 80s, many foreign varieties began to be planted and today we find vineyards of Tempranillo, Cabernet Sauvignon, Merlot, Garnacha tinta, Chardonnay, Sauvignon blanc and Muscat of Alexandria.
In the designation of origin, small wineries such as Rendé Masdeu, Carles Andreu, Clos Montblanc, Castell de Riudabella, Mas de la Pansa, Josep Foraster, Molí dels Capellans or Rosa Mª Torres coexist with others owned by large companies, such as Abadía de Poblet (from the Codorníu group), Cara Nord (from the Tomàs Cusiné-Castell del Remei group) or Familia Torres, which produces the mythical wines Grans Muralles and Milmanda and, more recently, Sons de Prades. The cooperative movement is still alive with Cellers Domenys (the result of the merger of seven cooperatives), the Agrícola de Barberà, the Cooperativa Agrícola de la Conca, and the Vinícola de Sarral, which is the largest producer of the autochthonous Trepat variety, widely used in the production of rosé cavas.
But let's go back to the beginning. What happened to Rendé Masdeu? The flood was not the end, quite the opposite, it was the beginning of a new stage. Yes, all of the 2019 harvest was lost and all the aged wines that had been stored since 2014, and nothing remains of the old winery. A year ago, the company moved to new facilities located two kilometers away, an old flour mill that they had the opportunity to buy and which also houses a restaurant and a wine shop. "We have started from scratch again," explains Mariona Rendé, who managed to raise 7,000 euros thanks to donations received as a result of solidarity and the sale of the clay wine bottles saved from the flood. The 2020 harvest was already processed in this new winery, where they now also want to start a rural tourism business with apartments for eight people. Three young wines from the last harvest have already gone on sale and we will have to wait until 2023 to taste the first aged wines of the new stage.