Going beyond the limit
Dominik Huber used to have an old motorbike.
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Not every wine of this set is in stock right now; the button adds the available ones.
- Terra de Cuques negre 2021currently sold out
- Arbossar 202165,00 €
- Dits del Terra 202165,00 €
Our pick
Arbossar and Dits del Terra are the same vintage, the same grape, the same village. If you want to know what difference a slope makes, open both on the same evening.
From the wine letter
Dominik Huber used to have an old motorbike. He rode around on it looking for vineyards, and in the evenings he drank beer with the farmers. The German had no experience of wine at all when he came to Priorat in 1996 for an internship at Mas Martinet. He wanted, as he tells it, “to learn better Spanish”. The language there is Catalan. After studying business, in Munich among other places, he returned for a year as a labourer and met Eben Sadie, with whom he founded Terroir al Limit in 2001. On one of his rides near Torroja, Huber came across the Arbossar, a steep north-facing slope of old Carinyena. Conventional wisdom had it that this was the wrong site for the wrong grape.
Today the estate owns some 15 hectares, farmed biodynamically. In the cellar, now run by the oenologist Tatjana Peceric, the grapes have been fermented as whole bunches since 2009, trodden only lightly and pressed after just eight to twelve days. The large wooden casks have been sold, and the wines mature in concrete. “We don’t want to have anything between the terroir and the glass,” Huber told the British wine writer Jamie Goode. In Torroja you can taste this in two premier cru Carinyenas, both from the 2021 vintage: the Arbossar grows on a north-facing slope, and the Dits del Terra, the wine the estate started with in 2001, on a south-facing slope. Together with the village wine Terra de Cuques, they are available as a set.
P.S. For the Terroir Històric Negre 2023, the estate buys in organic grapes, Garnatxa and Carinyena from families in the nine villages of the historic Priorat; the wine is fermented as whole bunches and sees no wood. With it, Huber says, he wants to convert Priorat to organic farming and make a wine for “the tapas bars and trattorias”. Approx. €20.50.
The wines in this letter
Equal parts of Carinyena and Garnatxa from vineyards around Torroja are fermented as whole bunches with wild yeasts for seven to ten days, then spend eight months in concrete and stainless steel. The estate calls its village wine juicy and balanced, a wine without pretensions. With rosemary lamb chops, or with a mushroom and smoked paprika pasta.
currently sold out
The Carinyena from a steep north-facing slope near Torroja, some of it planted around 1910, is fermented as whole bunches in concrete and stays there for eight months. Jamie Goode noted red cherry and berry fruits with a chalky texture, mineral and refined; he gave it 94 points. With monkfish and peperonata, or with pan-fried ceps.
65,00 €incl. VAT
Dits del Terra means fingers of the earth, a name taken from the gnarled vines on Torroja’s south-facing slope, which look as though they are clawing into the schist. The vineyard was one of Huber and Sadie’s first; the Carinyena, some sixty years old, is fermented as whole bunches in concrete. Jamie Goode, who gave it 96 points, writes of raspberry and cherry fruit, bright and linear, with great finesse. With roast bone marrow and parsley, or with ricotta ravioli and pumpkin.
65,00 €incl. VAT
Les Manyes lies above Scala Dei at 800 metres, on red clay with chalk and gypsum; the Garnatxa Peluda, whose leaves are hairy on the underside, was fermented as whole bunches and spent two years in a concrete tank. Jamie Goode gave it 98 points and found it floral and precise, with a spice-market exoticism. With partridge and Savoy cabbage, or with an aged Manchego.
199,00 €incl. VAT