Clos De L'Obac

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PASTRANA JARQUE FAMILY

The marriage of journalist Carles Pastrana (Tarragona) and winemaker Mariona Jarque (Barcelona) embarked, in the late seventies, on the adventure of their lives dedicating their family and professional future to the project of recovering Priorat wines and subsequently promoting these wines on an international scale. Thirty years after those beginnings, together with their two children Guillem and Iona, the essential future of this story, they have consolidated a project that is now known worldwide.
 

DOQ PRIORAT

In 1979, Carles Pastrana and Mariona Jarque revive the family winemaking tradition, embarking on a long adventure aimed at rescuing the ancient Carthusian wines in the heart of the lands that were overseen by the ancient priors of Scala Dei, a monastery located in the Priorat region. They create the properties Clos de l’Obac and Miserere, replanting the vineyards on the banks of the Siurana River in the southern pre-coastal area of Catalonia, and establish the winery Clos de l’Obac. Starting in 1989, they produce the first wines, and CLOS DE L’OBAC is considered by the World Guide as one of the 150 best wines in the world.
 

 A little history?

In the late 1970s, the Pastrana & Jarque marriage (Clos de l’Obac) together with a friend from that time, René Barbier (Clos Mogador), son of a family of wine merchants in Tarragona, began the replanting of vineyards in Priorat with the intention of producing great wines.

For more than ten years, the project did not attract the interest of wine professionals, nor did it enjoy the trust of financial entities or institutions due to its large scale, geographical location, the lack of financial resources from the promoters, and the practically nonexistent enological knowledge of all the people who, during the ten years 1979/1989, formed a group that, despite everything, ultimately achieved the purpose for which it was created. Thus, in the early eighties, the chemist Toni Basté (Clos Basté Krug), a Catalan residing in Strasbourg, joined the team, shortly after, Fernando García (Clos Setién), a wine importer in Frankfurt, followed, and in 1986, finally, the biologist and head of the School of Enology at the FP institute in Falset, Josep L. Pérez (Clos Martinet), was integrated.

The five, together with a neighbor from Gratallops who worked as a farmer, Antonio Rosario (Clos Ballesteros Jové), form the core of the entire project, a core that is definitively closed in 1987 with the establishment of an agricultural company, and the integration of the Englishman Adrian Garsed (Clos Garsed), and the Fleming Luc Van Iseghem (Clos dels Llops), both wine merchants in London and Ostend, respectively. In 1989 and 1990, before bottling the first harvest, a Swiss lady, Daphe Glorian (Clos Erasmus) and a young man from Rioja, Álvaro Palacios (Clos Dofí), join the project, although they never became part of the company.

 

 The wines from the properties Clos de l’Obac and Miserere, as well as those from the vineyards Dolç de l’Obac and Kyrie, follow a blending system based on a pattern that repeats grape varieties and percentages each year, according to the four specific blends chosen for each of the four wines. The purpose of this system is that, each year, it is the characteristics of our continental and Mediterranean climate that define by contrast the personality and character of each wine and vintage, rather than the characteristics of a wine with random blending being used to justify or define a vintage.

 

Subsequently, the wine, always by gravity, is transferred to the aging room in French oak barrels of the Limousin, Allier, and Nevers varieties, where it will remain for between ten and fifteen months depending on the characteristics of the vintage. During that time, it undergoes decantations through controlled manual transfers, in order to regularly separate and remove the lees that settle at the bottom of the barrels and can dirty the wine, altering its good flavors and aromas.