The Story behind the Vineyard Ca l’Apotecari de Porrera, Red Wine Triaca and its owner Santi Puig

‘Making wine is an extremely slow thing’

The first red wine launched was the Triaca of 2013

Triaca, or also Panacea for connoisseurs, is the elixir that apothecaries prepared to preserve health and well-being in general amde at the Vinyard Ca l’Apotecari de Porrera.

The starting year 2013 was an extraordinary vintage in Priorat, as stated by Robert Parker in his table of vintages. It was the perfect time for Santi to embark on the development of Triaca with the idea that had been macerating and taking shape for so long.

The characteristics of the resulting wine had been perfected in many successive experiments and passionate tuning trials that Santi had dedicated to it during all these years in the ‘Ca l’Apotecari’ winery.

How is Triaca made?

The vineyard is run by ecological standards, although it is not certified.

The harvest date is decided based on three variables: sugar level, acidity, and phenolic maturity. The first and second parameters are determined by chemical and physical analysis techniques, but the third is established by organoleptic means (with the help of wild boars, a very demanding animal). The grapes are harvested in the early hours of the day and taken to the winery. There it is refrigerated overnight, the next day it is skidded and placed in a stainless steel tank, also refrigerated, to do what is called cold maceration.

A couple of days later, the refrigeration is turned off, to allow the berries to slowly begin to ferment with their own yeasts. During the next three weeks, the fermentation temperature remains significantly low. Once this is completed, the skins are left to marinate for a week or two more before the pasta is drained and pressed. Santi only incorporates a small amount of pressed wine into the final wine to guarantee a sufficient level of tannins to facilitate aging. The coupage is made before malolactic fermentation.

The ‘Malo’ (Bad), as it is colloquially called, takes place in the aging barrels deep within the cellar. These barrels are made of French oak, but not too new, since Santi does not want the smoky aromas of the wood to dominate. There he will stay for more than a year and a half.

After this time, the wine is returned to a refrigerated tank to promote any residual precipitation before being bottled. This last stabilization process is done exclusively by means of the cold (often the weather helps) while the wine is subjected to a tasting panel of the DOQ Priorat Regulatory Council that must guarantee its quality and, if approved, award it the label. of the DOQ. Subsequently, the bottles are kept in the cellar for another year and a half to allow the last maturation before going out on the street.

How does the Red Wine Triaca DOQ Priorat taste?

Despite the fact that the word ‘minerality’ is very controversial, Santi cannot find a better word to define what it is that makes Priorat wines so characteristic. If you visit Priorat, drink water from the ‘Minas’ of the Vineyards, which will give you an exact definition of what this word means in wine. Priorat wines are also a cluster of aromas and smell with tannins tamed by time and alcohol that articulates the whole, rounding it out. It is for this reason that these wines require such long maturation times.

Triaca is a typical Priorat wine with an outstanding characteristic: Its Freshness

Triaca is a typical Priorat, but with a characteristic that makes it unique: its freshness. The objective we pursue, both in the vineyards and in the winery, is to preserve this penetrating acidity that makes the wine open in your glass, releasing wave after wave of aromas, among which we would highlight, surprisingly, that of fresh fruit.

Santi personally prefers to avoid decanting and let the wine open itself in the glass to be able to ‘contemplate’ the transformations that take place. Santi says that he would never tire of this show and it seems to me that neither do we. Somehow it is like walking with your eyes closed through the landscape of the region, stumbling over stumps of fennel or brambles, while listening to the struggling races of the partridges as they take flight and the hissing trajectories of the lizards, with waves of rosemary and thyme entwined with these sounds.

Santi will never make you a long list of the use of aromas of red fruits and others. It tastes bad to me, but what Santi tells us that he feels in a glass of Triaca is the earth under his feet, populated by an infinity of life forms, the sky above his head, also inhabited by a large number of animals and vines linking the two universes, the underground one with that of air and light.

In the words of Santi: ‘It’s infinitude in a single glass’