The sample of the 2021 Les Terrasses Velles Vinyes was truly impressive, a blend of 70% Garnacha and 30% Cari?ena. It's a lively and vibrant Priorat with lower alcohol and higher acidity and more freshness, pointing at a great vintage in the making. This could very well be the finest vintage of Terrasses, a wine that álvaro Palacios defined as a year of concentration and class. The wine is clean and pure, with great precision. It matured in barrel and cask for the past seven months, and the wine will continue its élevage for one more year. They expect to fill some 110,000 bottles and 2,000 magnums around May 2023.

In 2019, Les Terrasses was exceptionally high in Garnacha, the tendency in this cuvée. Cari?ena suffered more from the mildew of 2020, and the final blend of the 2020 Les Terrasses Velles Vinyes was 72% Garnacha and 28% Cari?ena, with 14.5% alcohol. It is gentle, honest and with typicity representing the wines from yesteryear but clean and harmonious, with nice balance and no oxidation or volatility, so an updated version of the traditional wines. 78,104 bottles, 2,000 magnums and 124 double magnums produced. It was bottled in May 2022.

The regional 2019 Les Terrasses Velles Vinyes was produced with a blend of grapes from 80 plots in eight villages from Priorat, 82% Garnacha with 17% Cari?ena and 1% white grapes, a year unusually high in Garnacha and unusually low in Cari?ena that suffered a lot from the heat. The destemmed and lightly crushed grapes fermented in concrete and oak vats with indigenous yeasts, and the wine matured in French oak barrels for 12 months. What happened here is that Cari?ena was burned by a heat spike of 43 degrees Celsius on the 28th of June, and there was a wildfire in Montsant that perhaps could have warmed things up even more. I think there might be a change toward more Garnacha and elegance in the wines from álvaro Palacios in Priorat, as this is brighter and less rustic than this wine used to be, more polished, perfumed and fine. The year of heat and drought. 101,600 bottles produced.

The 2018 Les Terrasses Velles Vinyes is a blend of 55% Garnacha with 44% Cari?ena and 1% white grapes. The destemmed and lightly crushed grapes fermented in concrete and oak vats with indigenous yeasts, and the wine matured in barriques for 13 months. It keeps the more rustic side of their wines but with the finesse of 2018. It's a wine marked by a high percentage of Cari?ena, but it's velvety, fresh and harmonious but with the dustier tannins. This is the British farmer, rustic but elegant with his Land Rover, the Wellington boots, corduroy trousers and a Barbour jacket... but with a Priorat twang. 126,000 bottles produced.

I've always had a special interest in this Garnacha and Cari?ena blend from álvaro Palacios, and the current vintage is now the 2017 Les Terrasses Velles Vinyes. It's produced with grapes from 80 different vineyards in eight villages and therefore is a regional wine. 2017 was a warm and ripe year that produced powerful wines. This 2017 is 55% Garnacha with 44% Cari?ena and a 1% pinch of white grapes that fermented in concrete and oak vats with indigenous yeasts and matured in barrique and oak vat for 11 months. This is the earthiest of the bottlings, and it has some rustic touches from the Cari?ena, which gives it its personality. 2017 was their earliest harvest ever (the first time they ever started harvesting in August!). They used a little more new oak, yet the wine is not oaky or excessively ripe. There is no room for sweetness here, and the wine is clean, reflecting very healthy grapes and very elegant tannins, quite transparent, not dry, but rather juicy. Great Terrasses, a triumph over the conditions of the vintage. 126,000 bottles produced.