“Wow! This back label is the same I used when working with my father as a child. I had no idea it was for Japan!”
This is what René Junior said to me with a big childish smile a year ago, when I showed him a bottle of Clos Mogador 1989, the first vintage produced which I kept in my cellar.
Clos Mogador is a wine that has never disappeared from the wine list at Sant Pau Tokyo Restaurant since we opened in 2004. I have had the privilege of tasting 2013 and this wine always arouses deep emotions in me, vintage after vintage. 2013 is the same year I visited the Priorat wine region for the second time thanks to an organised event called Espai Priorat.
This wine has a vivid and deep-red colour with a violet hue. Its brilliance is very attractive and transmits the strength and potential evolution of the wine. In the nose it displays pure red and bluish fresh fruit, notes of fennel and fragrant aromas like a cluster of violets, with cassis, black fruit and also espresso that transmits a lot of energy. When swirling the glass, mature notes such as marmalade appear, with aromatic herbals that provide freshness and minerality. It is a very complex wine, forming different layers and expressing all sensorial aromatics at a high level.
In the mouth it has soft tannins that fill the palate with a juicy fruit finish. After a few minutes in the glass, glamorous red fruit notes come up, and the elegance of its gentle acidity and tannins make the wine silkier and smoother.
It’s a wine that moves from masculine strength towards feminine sensuality.
It’s very difficult to find wines like this one, capable of giving such wide and deep impressions. These are the characteristics that great wines usually have. It reminded me of the vineyard’s landscape when I visited in 2013. In contrast to the rough environment of Priorat, which is associated with steep vineyards and slate-based soils, René’s vineyards were full of flowers, wild herbs, trees and birds humming around. I was able to check firsthand that all the deep nuances of this wine are the result of René’s respect and acceptance of nature by not using chemicals in his vineyards.
Vintage 1989. Since I discovered this wine for the first time, all vintages bring out emotions. It’s the wine from a boy back then that helped his father to label those bottles, his first artwork; someone who later would become a celebrity, René Barbier Senior. His wines, recognised worldwide, are made today by his son, and they challenge me as a professional and give me the best pleasure as a wine lover.
Vintage 2013 is excellent and will remain on the Sant Pau Tokyo wine list for many years.
Thank you, René. Thanks, Priorat 2013.
For the first time in our country, Clos Mogador, one of the prestigious wines made by René Barbier in the D.O.Ca. Priorat, was awarded the prestigious qualification of «Vi de Finca».
“Vi de Finca” is an additional qualification to the D.O.Ca. Priorat certification, which already recognizes this wine. Clos Mogador was the first wine to receive this prestigious qualification in the whole of Spain. It certifies that all grapes used to make this wine over at least the last five years have been sourced from the Clos Mogador single vineyard (five years which can be documented and traced), and at the same time is awarded to a wine which has received international acclaim over at least the last ten years.
2013
Certificat Vi de Finca
