History Celler Bàrbara Forés
In choosing the name of this small estate, its owners Maria Carme Ferrer and Manuel Sanmartín paid tribute to their great-great-grandmother (born in 1828), who taught her son Rafael how to make wine. In 1889, he started to build a small cellar in the very buildings where the wine is still made today. Right from the start, the wine was estate bottled – a rarity in those times. Maria Carme has always had a deep respect for this family heritage, but also the ambition to improve on what her forefathers transmitted to her. The local tradition of the Terra Alta (the southernmost part of Catalonia) was to produce a sweet rancio wine from White Grenache. This explains why this grape is still the most common in the area. But the Bàrbara Forés estate was at the origin of a great renewal (or change of direction) in this DO. As a professor in œnology, Maria Carme saw a larger potential for White Grenache. In the end of the 80’s, she started to bring her old vines into order and planted new varieties. The result was the first white Bàrbara Forés, at the beginning of the 90’s. Then, in 1996, a great red wine came along. More recently, Maria Carme rehabilitated an old and long forgotten grape, the Morenillo, which she uses for her Templari. Although the estate has acquired some new blocks of vines, it still is one of the smallest on our catalogue. Bàrbara Forés still makes wine in her grandfather’s house, in the heart of Gandesa.