Spain’s leading family winery Familia Torres got a firm nod from British wine publication Decanter for its efforts to revive ancestral and lost grape varietals when its red blend ‘Grans Muralles’ won the top prize of “Best in Show”.
Grans Muralles, the Mediterranean red wine made using native varieties including some ancestral varieties, was named “Best in Show” for the second year in a row at the Decanter World Wine Awards, organized by British magazine Decanter.
The 2016 vintage of Grans Muralles scored 97 points and earned the highest distinction in the competition.
It is also one of four Spanish wines – and the only Catalan wine – that appears in this exclusive category, chosen from among more than 16,500 wines from 55 countries, the winery has announced.
Grans Muralles 2016 is one of Familia Torres’ emblematic wines and part of its Anthology collection. It comes from a historical vineyard with deep and stony soils formed by layers of slate and granite, at the foot of the walls that once protected Poblet Monastery in Conca de Barberà.
Made for the first time in 1996, it is the first exponent of the project to recover ancestral varieties that Familia Torres started in the early 1980s, thanks to the inclusion of the Garró variety in its blend, while the Querol variety was also added years later.
Combined with Garnacha, Cariñena, and Monastrell, these varieties create an intense wine that is aromatic and perfectly balanced, where the freshness predominates. For Miguel Torres Maczassek, from the fifth generation of the Torres family, “Grans Muralles 2016 is one of the great vintages of this decade; it shows with considerable precision the Mediterranean character that comes from its landscape and its ancient varieties. The Decanter award is a huge recognition in general for the Mediterranean red wines from this area.”
Garró and Querol are among the six ancient varietals that the winery identified to have genuine winemaking potentials since the project started in 1980s. The other four are Moneu, Gonfaus, Forcada and Pirene.
The wines are sold in Hong Kong and Macau via Links Concept.
