History
From 1997, Antonio Rodriguez, Josep's son in law started to produce some wine to be bottled under the Primitiu de Bellmunt label. At a time when a number of producers were experimenting with imported French varieties they chose to call the wine Primitiu to underline that it was produce purely from Priorat's traditional varieties. That first vintage they made just 500 bottles, followed by 3000 in 1998. The cellar currently produces around 8500 bottles per annum, although there are sufficient old vineyards to exceed this number in the future. Since 2002, Josep Valiente has been in chage of the winemaking process, further refining the experience of the early years. Increased separation of the winemaking process according to the characteristics of each individual plot will enable future vintages to be further refined, extracting the full potential from the old Garnatxa and Carinyena vineyards. |
Primitiu
de Bellmunt is made exclusively from the Bartolomé family
vineyards. Like most Priorat families, Josep Bartolomé
made some wine himself both for family consumption and for sales
in bulk. The remainder of production was sold to other producers
in the region. The survival of such a legacy of old vineyards
is a tribute to the life's work of Josep Bartolomé, through
the difficult years of the sixties and seventies when so many
vineyards in Priorat were abandoned.