When
I met Mireia Torres, daughter of Miguel Torres Sr. for
the second time at the FPV tasting at Vinoelite in Valencia
a couple of months ago, I asked her an innocuous question,
'Why don't you let your wine producers to enter India?
You are already big guns there! Give your countrymen
a chance to expand the market for Spanish wines' I exhorted
her.
She simply smiled and said, 'you want us to help the
competition?!' Then with a glean in her eyes, she added,
'we are going to get tougher and do even better. We
want to increase our market share in India and make
it even more difficult for the competition.'
I make no bones out about it and am often quoted in
Spain, telling all the potential producers that 'to
enter India, you have to compete with France, Italy,
Australia, Chile and …Torres!' The award winning
winery produces wines with very good price-quality ratio
and the competition feels the heat all over the globe.
Torres means towers in Spanish and its wines from Priorat,
Penedes, Conca del Barbera, Ribera del Duoro and Toro
are already their towers of strength. Now Torres is
adding yet another tower of strength to its wine portfolio
from the popular Rioja region.
After a lot of prospecting, Torres has decided to finally
settle down in the town of Labastida in the Rioja Alvara
territory, one of the three regions of La Rioja appellation,
where thy have bought 12 acres of land. The company
plans its first Riojan vintage in 2009.
Cashing on the popularity of Rioja as an international
brand, the company had decided that it must make investments
in this region to have a company representing full range
of Spanish wines.
The company will soon start construction of the winery
and the cellars. It will follow the model similar to
Valladolid in another popular region, Ribera del Duero,
where it makes Celeste label from grapes bought from
the growers. It appears that initially grapes will be
purchased in Rioja too.
Initial production of the new wine, as yet unnamed,
will be about 20,000 cases.
The company is known to use innovative techniques to
market its products.
For instance, it had launched a Da Vinci Code-style
marketing campaign involving Carthusian monks and buried
treasure, for Salmos, its new Priorat wine that had
come in March under the supervision of Mireia.
The treasure hunt, accessed via a code hidden on the
wine's back label, attracted over 200 people to the
vineyard.
Only about 7,000 cases of Salmos, the Torres family's
first wine from the Priorat region in Catalonia in north
eastern Spain, were produced from the 2005 vintage.
Production is already sold out.
Salmos, made in remembrance of the Carthusian monks
who cultivated vines in Priorat from 1095 until 1835,
when the region began to fall into decline, is made
from a blend of local garnacha and cariñena grapes,
blended with syrah and cabernet sauvignon. Torres had
bought these vineyards too in 1996.
The game, which takes you on 'an adventure through
Catalonia, discovering mysteries and tasting great wines,
makes 'You go into a virtual 17th century monastery
to get the clues you need to start a physical trip from
Barcelona to the vineyards, a bit like the Da Vinci
Code.' Torres said. 'And when you get here you go to
a nearby town to have a glass of wine and get your certificate,'
he said.
Source: http://www.secretsalmos.es/
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