If anyone embodies the promise and spirit of “The New Spain,” it is Álvaro Palacios. His L’Ermita is widely considered—along with Peter Sisseck’s Pingus—to be the most important new Spanish wine of the modern era.
One of nine children born to the owners of Rioja’s respected Palacios Remondo, Álvaro studied enology in Bordeaux, while working under Jean-Pierre Moueix at Ch. Pétrus. He credits his tenure at Pétrus for much of his winemaking philosophy and for showing him “the importance of great wines.”
Álvaro could have returned to the security of his family’s Domaine. But instead, he was drawn to remote and seductive Priorat, 60 miles from Barcelona, which had been one of Spain’s important pre-Phylloxera wine regions. Beginning in the 12th Century, Carthusian monks had painstakingly terraced and cultivated this rugged landscape, and Álvaro believed that their ancient wisdom could be tapped to yield wines with the stature of Pétrus and Grange.

Álvaro’s original vineyard, Finca Dofí, is today made primarily from Garnacha, with less than 20% Samsó (Carignane) and roughly 2% white varieties. Aged in large French foudre, Dofí combines power and richness with great breed and finesse.

During his time in Priorat, Álvaro has identified special plots and two of these today yield esteemed microcuvées. One is an incredibly special plot of Garnacha in Bellmunt, Les Aubaguetes. Álvaro came to believe its centenarian vines were some of the most perfect clonal stock in the region, and he was finally able to purchase it in time for the 2015 harvest. Today, just 1,500 bottles a year emerge from this unique Priorat cru. The second is La Baixada, the north-facing side of the original Dofi vineyard. The site provides fruit for Dofí today, but a ridgeline section of it was so special that Álvaro began bottling it on its own with the 2018 vintage.