With the unveiling of its new winery in Empordà, however, the Perelada Group has gone one better. Not only is the winery at the cutting edge of technological and functional advancements in winemaking, and sporting an avant-garde design, but it has also been driven from the very start by a total commitment to sustainability.
So much so that it is the first European winery to be certified LEED Gold – the world’s highest sustainable building certificate. Largely built underground the winery mixes futuristic design, sustainability and oenotourism with winemaking.
The Buyer’s Marina Ray was one of the first visitors, talked to winemaker Delphí Sanahuja about how it has affected his winemaking capabilities and tastes through a range of Perelada wines.
“DO Empordà is not widely known in the UK yet, but having tasted the Perelada wines and seen the extent of their ambition embodied in their beautiful new winery, I have a feeling that we’ll be hearing much more of them in the future,” writes Ray.
The small DO of Empordà, on the north west tip of Spain, is a wine region to watch.
Running up to the border with France – and sharing terroir and geography with the more famous Roussillon – Empordà is bounded by the Pyrenees and the Mediterranean, with a winemaking tradition that dates back to the 6th century BC.
The wines are typically robust and concentrated, with high alcohol and good structure, from grapes dried out by the winds that can blow 100km/hr. A newly opened 1,800m3 winery, from the biggest producer in the area, the Perelada Group, heralds a leap in productivity and quality.
First conceived in 2003 by the Suqué Mateu family and local architects RCR, the winery project was shelved in 2006 amidst economic uncertainty, revived and updated in 2016 when sustainability became a key motivator, completed 2020, delayed again by Covid and finally opened this October.
Unsurprisingly, given such a gestation, everything about the new winery is impeccably thought out, down to the tiniest of details. There is no great facade or fanfare, 1,600m3 being below ground: the architects have created a landscape rather than just a building, and the winery is the first in Europe to achieve a LEED GOLD certification for sustainability.
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