The Co-op, the Incubator & the Trepat Hand
Carlania Celler is the Trepat heartland made flesh — a family micro-cellar in Barberà de la Conca, the village gathered around an eleventh-century Templar castle that is the epicentre of Catalonia's most patiently underestimated grape. Jordi Miró and Sònia Gomà-Camps are natives: Jordi grew up working the family vineyards beside his father, and for years the family did what the village had always done — sell grapes to the cooperative. In 2007 they decided to make wine themselves, starting inside the Viver de Celleristes — the region's pioneering winemaker-incubator, housed in the 1903 building of Spain's first agricultural cooperative — and by 2009 they had their own cellar in the village and their own name on the label: carlania, the feudal word for the lands a lord granted the carlà who governed and defended his castle. Today they farm 9.3 hectares across five parcels at 400–500 metres on the noble clay-limestone, dry-farmed and worked by hand, with vines from 15 to 110 years old — certified organic since 2008, biodynamic preparations since 2014, their own compost, the lunar calendar. And since 2015 the cellar rule is absolute: fermented grapes and nothing more — no added yeasts, no enzymes, no sulfites, no fining, no filtration. Every wine, even the white, even the pét-nat, carries Trepat — the early-budding, late-ripening native once deemed fit only for rosé Cava. Around 25,000 bottles a year leave the village, each one, as the back label warns, unique. The same back label lists the ingredients: organic grapes, cold, warmth, rain, wind, work and passion.
The Carlà's Lands, the Viver & the 2007 Hand
The name comes from feudal law. On the highest point of Barberà de la Conca stands an eleventh-century Templar castle, and the village grew in rings around it. In feudal times the carlà — the castellan — was the man charged with governing and defending the castle's lands in his lord's name, and the carlania were the lands the lord granted him for that labour. In Barberà the word survived as a toponym, and in 2009 it became a winery. Jordi Miró's family had grown grapes here for generations — his grandfathers a small winemaker on one side and a renowned grafter on the other — and Jordi learned to prune, plough and harvest beside his father Miguel. For years the fruit went, as everyone's did, to the village cooperative.
The break came in 2007, when Jordi and Sònia decided to make wine from their own grapes — and the region handed them the perfect instrument. The Viver de Celleristes de Barberà, a pioneering incubator unique in Spain, rents cellar space and equipment at low prices to emerging growers inside the 1903 modernist building that housed the country's first agricultural cooperative. Harvest there must, by house rule, be done by hand; when it starts, the winemakers coordinate grape reception over WhatsApp — "like a student flat," as one fellow incubee put it, "but in this case, a winery." In 2008 the vineyards were certified organic by the CCPAE; in 2009 the couple left the incubator, built their own micro-cellar in the village, and founded Carlania Celler.
The convictions hardened in sequence. After the difficult harvest of 2014, Jordi and Sònia trained in biodynamics and began treating the vineyard with preparations, making their own compost and following the lunar calendar in field and cellar. From 2015 the wines became what they call them — vins vius, living wines: fermented grapes and nothing more, no selected yeasts, no enzymes, no added sulfites, no fining, no filtration. They are blunt about the reasoning: the range of chemistry still permitted in "organic" wine has, for them, hollowed the word of credibility. And they are blunt about the identity too — Trepat in every wine, partly or entirely, because preserving and promoting the native variety is not a marketing line but a reason for being. Around 25,000 bottles a year, and each one different from the next.
"Ingredients: organic grapes, cold, warmth, rain, wind, work and passion. We do not add yeasts, enzymes or any other adjuvant in the vinification and maturation of our wines. Each bottle can be different."
— The Back Label of Every Carlania Bottle
The Basin, the Castle Hill & the Tapàs Hand
The Conca de Barberà is exactly what its name says — a conca, a basin — ringed by the Prades mountains and the Sierra de Miramar, twenty miles inland from Tarragona and the sea. Its modern wine history was written by Cistercian monks of Burgundian origin, who made the monastery of Poblet the engine of the region's grapegrowing in the twelfth century; its earlier fortune was stranger — grape spirit. Montblanc, the walled capital, counted 54 distilleries in 1754, and the dependence on bulk never quite left: today some 80% of the Conca's grapes still disappear into Cava. The vines climb from 300 to 800 metres — until vines went in at Cerdanya, these were the highest in Catalonia — and until recently the region's own grape wasn't even mentioned on its labels.
That grape is Trepat: a variety found essentially nowhere else, early to bud and late to ripen — harvest runs into the second half of October — with big, compact bunches, a dread of spring frost and a thirst that only the cool clay soils the locals call tapàs can reliably slake. For a century it was bulked into rosé and rosé Cava, "regarded as a lesser variety," as Bernat Andreu of the pioneering Celler Carles Andreu recalls. The first varietal red Trepats appeared only in 2004; by 2019 the number of producers making them had tripled. In Barberà de la Conca — the variety's epicentre and identity — the village has thrown a Festa del Trepat every year since 2009, the same year Carlania opened its doors.
Carlania's five parcels sit at 400 to 500 metres on clay-calcareous soils, a mix of en vaso bush vines and espaldera trellis, dry-farmed and worked entirely by hand, with vines ranging from 15 to 110 years old. The jewels are named: Els Corrals, two hectares of fifty-year-old Trepat on sandy-loam at 410 metres beside the Anguera river, whose cool, fresh ground suits the variety's thirst; Els Plans, where the family planted Merlot in 1997; and the high single vineyard at 500 metres that gives Sant Pere d'Ambigats. Trepat, Macabeu and Parellada for the Conca; a little Merlot for curiosity. Every wine, in part or in whole, is Trepat — the white included.
A village built in rings around its eleventh-century Templar castle, with a cooperative tradition older than anywhere else in Spain — the 1903 modernist building of the country's first agricultural co-op now houses the Viver de Celleristes, the incubator where Carlania was born. Since 2009 the village hosts the Festa del Trepat, an annual celebration of the native grape. This is the variety's home ground and its laboratory: if Trepat has a future as a serious red, it is being written in these streets.
Shielded by the Prades range and the Sierra de Miramar, the Conca de Barberà is a high inland bowl between Tarragona and Lleida: Mediterranean sun by day, mountain cold by night, and a diurnal swing that keeps the late-ripening Trepat fresh. Poblet's Burgundian Cistercians planted it in the twelfth century; distilleries ran it in the eighteenth; Cava absorbs most of it today. The basin's wine identity is being rebuilt around its own grape — and Carlania is one of the rebuilders.
Nine point three hectares in five named sites on the noble calcareous clay, dry-farmed, hand-worked, espaldera and en vaso, with vines from teenage to 110 years old. Els Corrals, by the Anguera river at 410 metres, holds fifty-year-old Trepat on sandy-loam — the fresh soil the thirsty variety loves. Els Plans carries the family's 1997 Merlot. Isolated parcels, living soils, their own biodynamic compost: the map of the wines, and the whole of it.
Early-budding, late-ripening, frost-shy and drought-shy, big-bunched and pale — Trepat spent a century as anonymous rosé and Cava fodder, a "lesser variety" that didn't merit a label mention. Farmed low and picked late, it gives something few Mediterranean reds can: freshness, soft tannins, moderate alcohol, white pepper and red fruit, a wine for the table rather than the trophy shelf. Carlania puts it in every bottle it makes — even the white, even the pét-nat.
Fermented Grapes & Nothing More & the Living Hand
In the vineyard, the inputs list is two items long: sulfur and biodynamic preparations. No herbicides, no pesticides, no synthetic fertiliser; the compost is made on the farm, and the work of field and cellar follows the lunar calendar. Harvest is by hand into twenty-kilo boxes, so the bunches arrive whole, in late September and October, when Trepat's long cycle finally closes. Selection happens in the vineyard, because after that there is nothing left to hide behind.
In the cellar — a micro-cellar in the village street — the rule since 2015 is total: no added yeasts, no enzymes, no added sulfites, no fining, no filtration. Fermentations run on indigenous yeasts in stainless steel; a portion of El Petit Carlania ferments carbonically for lift; the top red, Els Corrals, and parts of the white and the rosé rest in old-fashioned chestnut barrels, the wood of this country's older cellars. The bottles may carry natural sediment and a prickle of CO2, and the family asks only one thing of the drinker: let the wine breathe. Vins vius — living wines, in which each bottle is unique and different from the others.
The aim is not austerity for its own sake but a kind of wine the Mediterranean once took for granted: wine as refreshment and food, part of the daily table, pure and mouth-coating rather than extracted and polished. Jordi and Sònia are candid that this path cost them — a difficult harvest pushed them into biodynamics, and the natural-wine world, they admit, is "another world" they entered bottle by bottle. But the wines that result are sincere with their particularity: they do not hide anything, and above all, as the couple insists, they are healthy.
Vins Vius — the Carlania Method
The method fits on a back label: organic grapes, cold, warmth, rain, wind, work and passion. Farm five clay-limestone parcels by hand, feed them nothing but sulfur and biodynamic preparations, pick late into small boxes. Ferment what the vineyard grew on the yeasts it arrived with, in steel, with chestnut for the wines that want a slower winter. Add nothing — no yeast, no enzyme, no sulfite — and take nothing away: no fining, no filtration. Expect sediment, expect a little gas, expect each bottle to be its own small variation on the year. It is the oldest recipe in the Conca, practised with new conviction: fermented grapes, and nothing more.
Petit Carlania, Els Corrals, Plantarga & the Living Hand
The range is a masterclass in one grape: Trepat, partly or entirely, in every wine — two single-varietal reds, a Merlot blend aged in oak, a rosé from the old vines of Els Corrals, a white in which Trepat seasons Macabeu, and a pét-nat in which it tints Parellada. All certified organic, biodynamically farmed, hand-harvested, native-fermented, and bottled unfined and unfiltered with no added sulfites. Around 25,000 bottles a year, at prices that still assume wine is for drinking.
The Incubator's Graduate, the Festa & the Living-Wine Hand
Carlania's first legacy is a proof of path. The Viver de Celleristes was built to show that the Conca's growers — 650 of them, most feeding the Cava machine — could become winemakers, and Carlania is its model graduate: co-op grape-sellers in 2006, incubees in 2007, their own cellar by 2009, a reference for natural wine within the decade. The region noticed. Red Trepat production tripled between 2007 and 2019, and the variety that once went unnamed on labels now has its own festival in Carlania's own village every year.
The second legacy is a standard of honesty. In a market where "organic" can still hide a long list of cellar chemistry, Carlania moved the whole conversation to the back label: ingredients — grapes, weather, work, passion; nothing added, nothing taken away, and a warning that the bottle in your hand is alive, a little different from every other. It is the philosophy that carried them to RAW WINE, to José Pastor Selections and SoilAir in the United States, and to the natural-wine shelves of half of Europe — at prices, still, of an everyday table wine.
And the third legacy is the grape itself. When a region's identity has been outsourced for a century — to distilleries, then to Cava — choosing the local variety is a political act as much as an agricultural one. Jordi and Sònia chose it in 2007 and never hedged: Trepat in every wine, partly or entirely, forever. Ambassadors of the authentic Trepat, as their Catalan merchant calls them. The carlà guarded the castle's lands for his lord; Carlania guards the Conca's grape for everyone who comes next.
"We try to transmit these values, this authenticity, our illusions, our effort — part of ourselves, of our lives — in our wines."
— Jordi Miró & Sònia Gomà-Camps, Carlania Celler