Pere Bové és el nou president de la Denominació d’Origen Terra Alta https://www.vilaweb.cat/noticies/pere-bove-president-denominacio-origen-terra-alta/ #TerraAlta #Economia

Some more street photos from yesterday's Festa de l'Oli in Fatarella, Terra Alta. Any fair is an excuse to throw some slices of #meat over the #fire (wild #boar in this case), and serve it between two slices of toasted #bread which is washed down with copious amount of local #wine.

#Catalonia #TerraAlta #Fair

This is the time for small county fairs where you get to taste a lot of newly pressed olive oil and #Clotxa, a rustic semi-spherical #bread, which is cut in half, hollowed, drizzled with #olive oil and filled with grilled #sardines and /or #botifarra negra (local sausage made with pig meat, pig blood, seasoned with salt and pepper). This is eaten with #olives on the side and washed down with copious amount of cheap red local #wine. Fires and grills are free for all and you just buy your ready made Clotxa kit from the local ladies.

#Catalonia #Traditional #Food #TerraAlta

This is the time for small county fairs where you get to taste a lot of newly pressed olive oil and the famous #Clotxa, a rustic almost spherical #bread, which is cut in half, hollowed, drizzled with #olive oil and filled with grilled #sardines and /or #botifarra negra (local sausage made with pig meat, pig blood, seasoned with salt and pepper ). This is eaten with #olives on the side and washed down with cheap red local #wine. Fires and grills are free for all and you just buy your Clotxa kit and join the fun.

#Catalonia #Traditional #Food #TerraAlta

Terra Alta: bare almond tree and electric pole

#photography #monchrome #Catalonia #TerraAlta

Some gloomy black and white images taken on the road trip today.

#Catalonia #TerraAlta #Monochrome #Photography

The graduated terrace steps of the Pobla de Masaluca at the most flung south western corner of #Catalonia. Normally one of the hottest places but today shrouded in wintery #fog.

#TerraAlta

Nothing gives me greater joy than buying natural #wine directly from source. Here is Alex from La Despeinada checking the evolution of a Garnatxa picked from the upper fields around his finca in Bot, Terra Alta.

#NaturalWine #RawWine #OrangeWine #TerraAlta #Catalonia #spain

Last night we were talking about wines made in clay vessels.

This is the bodega of Vins del Tros, at Vilalba dels Arcs, Terra Alta. I went to visit them when oenologist Joan Ramon Bada was still in charge. He took me to his lab and we did a blind taste of clay fermented vs inox fermented wines; those fermented in #clay vessels stood out for the clean smooth roundness and depth.

Clay also seems to have a thermodynamic effect as a natural temperature regulator and the shape of the vessels is ideal for the fermentative process as it rises and falls in an elliptical motion.

Vins dels Tros was one of the first to bring back the almost extinct #Morenillo grape variety (more about this later) and are increasingly using indigenous yeast. All their wines are #ecological and made with minimal intervention.

#wine #organicwine #TerraAlta #Catalonia #fermentation