Scala Dei celebrates 50 years of Priorat winemaking

Priorat winery Scala Dei marked the anniversary with a tasting spanning its five decades, hosted in a medieval monastery.

For those used to hotel conference rooms or, perhaps the private dining room of a restaurant, Scala Dei’s choice of venue for its celebratory tasting offered quite the contrast.

For the occasion of its 50th anniversary, the Priorat winery took over the Cartoixa d’Escaladei. Intricate stonework, light shining into vaulted chapels, a serene cloister filled with the trickle of a fountain: the 12th-century monastery thrums with history. It was an apt setting for a tasting of historic significance.

That is because, although the headline event is a 50th anniversary, fine Priorat from the village of Scala Dei is not a recent phenomenon. Like the monastery and its village headquarters, the winery takes its name from a local shepherd’s vision of a ladder leading to the heavens: God’s ladder or, in Latin, ‘scala dei’.

The religious association is one key reason for Priorat’s fine reputation. The region first produced wine in the 13th century, when it was made by Carthusian monks, meaning that perfecting the style has been the work of centuries. The monastery’s vineyards were eventually bought by five families in 1844, forming the precursor company to Cellers de Scala Dei. Although the families, assisted by the population of the hilltop village, produced wine from that year, 1974 was a watermark moment. It was the birth of Priorat as we know it today.

In that year, Cellers de Scala Dei officially launched. It also produced its first vintage of Scala Dei Cartoixa, renowned as the first Priorat bottled under the denomination’s label. It has served as a blueprint for 50 years of winemaking since.

Telling the story in the glass

The tasting, fittingly, began with the 1974 vintage before embarking on a whistle-stop tour of 10 vintages through to 2020. Ricard Rofes, the winemaker at Scala Dei, took a historian’s approach to the tasting: rather than simply select his favourite vintages, he told the story of the winery. The 1975, for instance, consistently showcased the wine’s capacity for long ageing, while the 1974 was highly variable between bottles.

“The 1975 is the superior wine,” he admitted to the crowd of winemakers and dignitaries in attendance. The candid approach was refreshing. Rofes presented himself as a custodian of tradition rather than a marketeer. “For someone born in this land and a wine lover, being part of this history is an immense privilege,” he said, “but also a great responsibility.”

Thus the tasting also presented out-of-vogue styles, with vintages from the 1980s and 1990s adhering to the heavier fashions of the time, aided by international varieties. But the tasting also showed the remarkable capacity, even in the earliest vintages, of Garnacha and Carineña to age majestically.

Most excitingly, it showed the return to those varieties and an elegant style in the 21st century, making the most of high-altitude sites and old vines. This move was inspired by the immense ageing potential of Scala Dei’s oldest wines, and perhaps explains the wines’ strong reputation today.

Ultimately, that reputation posed not just a question of personal pride, but created a sense that Scala Dei has a duty to its history and its community. Certainly the crowd that ate and drank together during the landmark event – winemakers, experts, politicians and more – indicated a collective duty.

“Celebrating the 50th anniversary of Scala Dei, the oldest winery in Priorat,” said Rofes, “drives us to continue making wine with the same dedication and respect that the Carthusian monks taught us centuries ago, keeping the essence of our land alive.”

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