The Engineer, the Enologist & the Pre-Phylloxera Vines
An agricultural engineer and an enologist who returned to family land in the Alt Camp to farm 18 hectares biodynamically — vines, olives, almonds, carob and pre-phylloxera Vinyater — and prove that Catalonia's oldest native grapes deserve the gentlest hand.
Origin — The Farm, the Degrees, and the Decision to Stay
Josep Dasca Batalla is an agricultural and forestry engineer. Alba Vives is an enologist. They could have taken those credentials to any winery in Catalonia, or any consultancy in the world. Instead, they chose to stay on family land in Valls, in the comarca of Alt Camp, twenty kilometres from the Mediterranean and just south of Barcelona — and to farm it the hard way.
The Dasca family had worked these plots for generations, growing the traditional crops of the region: vines, olive trees, almond trees, hazelnut trees, carob, and sown fields. For decades they sold their organic olive oil, almonds and hazelnuts directly to locals who sought them out. But the vines were mostly invisible — sold off to cooperatives, blended away, their potential buried under bulk production.
In 2014, Josep and Alba decided the grapes deserved better. They began making wine themselves, converting the family's agricultural heritage into a cellar philosophy: biodynamic farming, native-yeast fermentation, and a refusal to treat the vineyard as anything other than a living ecosystem. The farm was already organic. They pushed it further — no chemicals, no pesticides, spontaneous cover crops, pruning residues returned to the soil, and a fierce attention to the microorganisms that would carry the fermentation.
Today they farm six separate estates around Valls, totalling roughly 18 hectares. Wine is one crop among many, but it is the one that speaks most clearly for the place.
The Place — Where the Mediterranean Meets the Pre-Phylloxera Past
Valls sits in the Alt Camp, at the western edge of the Tarragona plain, where the coastal heat is moderated by inland altitude and the soils are sandy enough to have spared a few vines from the phylloxera apocalypse. The six Dasca estates are scattered around the town, each with its own exposure, its own age, its own voice.
Six Estates, One Philosophy
The 18 hectares are not a single contiguous vineyard but a patchwork of family plots — some planted to vine, others to olive or almond, all farmed according to the same biodynamic calendar and ecological principles. The diversity is the point: a farm, not a factory.
Pre-Phylloxera Survivors
Among the vines are plants as old as 65 years, including rare pre-phylloxera Vinyater — a native Catalan variety nearly lost to history. These gnarled, ungrafted vines produce minuscule yields of intense, singular fruit that anchors the estate's most distinctive cuvées.
Native Varieties, Native Tongue
The cellar works with Macabeu, Cartoixà (Xarel·lo), Vinyater, Trepat, Garnacha, Cabernet Sauvignon and Ull de Llebre — a palette that reads like a census of Catalan viticulture. No international grapes dominate; the conversation is strictly local.
Sandy Soils, Living Ground
The soils around Valls are light and sandy — poor in nutrients, excellent for vine stress, and hostile to phylloxera. Cover crops grow wild between the rows, prunings are chipped back into the earth, and the farm's biodiversity is treated as an asset, not a problem to be sprayed away.
Winemaking — Wine Is Born in the Vineyard
At Dasca Vives, the cellar is an extension of the field, not a correction facility. Harvest is manual, timed to the optimal moment of ripeness. The grapes arrive intact, are pressed or macerated according to their nature, and ferment with only the yeasts that live on their skins — no inoculations, no enzymes, no adjustments.
The red wines macerate gently; the whites are pressed directly or given short skin contact; the Ancestral is bottled during fermentation to capture its own bubbles. Sulfites appear only in trace amounts in some cuvées, enough to protect the wine's freshness without suppressing its voice. There are no additives, no filtration, no clarification. What the vineyard grew is what the bottle contains.
Production is micro-scale — a few thousand bottles per cuvée — and most of it is sold directly from the farm or through a small network of natural wine merchants who understand that these wines are not standardised products but seasonal snapshots of 18 hectares farmed by hand.
The Wines — Young, Cheerful, and Utterly Catalan
The range is deliberately approachable — wines meant for the table, not the auction house — but each bottle carries the signature of native grapes, old vines, and a cellar that refuses to intervene.
Jovent
Young whiteThe entry point — a fresh, direct white made for immediate pleasure. Crisp apple, white flowers, and the easy drinkability that defines the house style. A wine that asks nothing and gives everything.
Xerric
Estate whiteA blend of Xarel·lo and Macabeu from the family's older parcels. Mineral, textured, and unmistakably Catalan — green almond, fennel, and a fine chalky grip that speaks of the Alt Camp's sandy soils.
Llunàtic
Estate whiteThe flagship white — 80% Macabeo and 20% Vinyater from vines up to 65 years old. Medium-bodied, textured, bright and easy, with stone fruit, wild herbs and the quiet intensity of pre-phylloxera fruit.
Crit
Estate redA red of crunch and clarity — native Catalan varieties fermented with wild yeasts and aged briefly to preserve fruit. Red berry, Mediterranean scrub, and a freshness that defies the coastal heat.
Trepat
Light red100% Trepat — the signature grape of Conca de Barberà — made as a light, low-alcohol red. Delicate strawberry, pink peppercorn, and a floral lift that makes it as comfortable chilled as it is at cellar temperature.
Ancestral
Pét-nat70% Cartoixà and 30% Macabeu, bottled during fermentation to trap its own bubbles. Amber-gold, softly sparkling, with green apple, white peach, pizza dough and a finish of almond and wild honey. The estate's most joyful bottle.
Legacy — Preserving What the Cooperatives Forgot
Dasca Vives matters because it chose memory over convenience. In a region where most growers still deliver to cooperatives and most historic varieties have been ripped out in favour of higher-yielding clones, Josep and Alba have kept pre-phylloxera Vinyater in the ground, farm biodynamically across six separate family plots, and sell their wine directly to the people who will drink it.
Their legacy is not a single great vintage or a famous cuvée. It is the proof that multi-crop family farming — vines beside olives beside almonds beside carob — can produce wine as serious as any monoculture estate, and that an agricultural engineer and an enologist can choose to stay home and still change the conversation.
Through their open-door wine tourism — visits on the second Sunday of each month, tastings in the cellar, direct sales from the farm — they have built a local culture that values what grows in Valls more than what is imported from Barcelona. The wines travel lightly beyond Catalonia, but the model travels further: farm first, cellar second, and never let the two forget each other.