Terroir Sense Fronteres

The dramatic view from Dominik Huber and Tatjana Peceric’s Les Manyes vineyard shows the tortured topography of the Priorat, their adopted home. Making wines in the Priorat has always been a challenging struggle against the torrid climate, steep hillsides, poor soils, and a generally conservative approach to grape growing and winemaking. But, being inclined towards organic and biodynamic cultivation and preferring wines of infusion rather than extraction, these two outsiders (Dominik from Germany and Tatjana from Serbia) must toil even more. Especially after all the accolades their distinctive wines earn year after year. So rather than look south from Les Manyes, they turned their attention to the north, where the DO of Montsant offers a diversity of terruño and a more liberal attitude about farming and winemaking. In 2017, they created Terroir Sense Fronteres, a range of wines from the Montsant as honest and forthright in expressing their origins as they’ve done in the Priorat with Terroir al Limit.

In the Montsant, they’ve assembled a diverse collection of sites. Some they own outright, while others are farmed organically under their supervision. They offer two village wines sourced from vines on sandy clay soils – a white called Brisat and a red called simply Negre. In addition, there are currently three single terroir offerings, Vèrtebra from La Figuera, just to the west of Priorat, and Marcenca and Guix Vermell from a vineyard close to Les Manyes but just over the border in Montsant. With less rigid regulations, a preference for sheltered sites, and their natural inclination for expressive and lively wines, the offerings from Terroir Sense Fronteres are slightly lower in alcohol and lighter in color than what they make in the Priorat. Still, they share the same vinous persistence, haunting aromas, mineral depths, and fruit precision.