The 2018 Les Tallades de Cal Nicolau is a completely different animal from the 2017. 2017 was very warm and challenging, and while 2018 was not easy, it was cooler and had more rain. So, the 2018 wine has lower alcohol, 13.26%, and more freshness and a sensation of acidity. It's elegant, perfumed and nuanced, with a strong personality, like a Mediterranean Pinot Noir, combining notions of flowers and red berries with Mediterranean aromatic herbs. It's medium-bodied and has abundant, chalky and fine-grained tannins. They produced 620 bottles in 2018 that were filled in the spring of 2020.

I had two vintages to taste from the top and rarest of their wines, the Picpoul varietal from ancient vines, starting with the 2017 Les Tallades de Cal Nicolau, from a very different year than the 2018 that I tasted next to it. There is more ripeness and alcohol here, and it suffers in the comparison. There's some earthy rusticity, and the imprint from the oak is noticeable, something very rare at this address. 550 bottles.

The nuanced 2014 Les Tallades de Cal Nicolau was produced with the rare red Picpoul grape, which is floral and fresh. It comes from only 0.2 hectares of ungrafted Picapoll Tinta vines planted in 1870 on limestone-rich soils. It fermented with indigenous yeasts in a 500-liter oak barrel with a 28-day maceration and aged in two well-seasoned, neutral 225-liter barriques for 12 months. It has depth and harmony, concentration and elegance, with precise flavors and no noticeable wood. 570 bottles and 12 magnums were filled in March 2016.

The unique 2013 Les Tallades de Cal Nicolau was cropped from a cold and rainy year with a mild summer that resulted in a crop with more floral aromas and fresher wines in general. This limited bottling from the "Singularidades" range, where the name of the vineyard and the name of the vigneron have special importance, comes from an ancient plot of 0.2 hectares planted in 1870 with ungrafted Picapoll Tinta on limestone-rich soils that tend to produce a light and agile wine that is easy to drink but has more complexity than it seems. It fermented with indigenous yeasts in 500-liter oak barrels with a 28-day maceration and aged in well-seasoned, neutral 225-liter barriques for 12 months. There is a level of precision, of detail, of nuance and refinement I hadn't seen in this wine before. It feels like the grapes were picked on the exact day to deliver enough ripeness yet keep the ethereal personality. It has great depth and persistence while giving a sensation of being light. The flavors are precise, like they were chiseled or cut with a laser. It's simply a beautiful wine. It's drinkable now, but I'd love to see where it is with a decade in bottle. Unfortunately, only 600 bottles were produced, so chances of finding it again are slim.

2012 was not as dry in Masroig as in other villages or other zones, and here they saw some 470 liters of rain, compared with the dry 2011 where it only rained some 298 liters, so the wines are fresher than those from other places. The ultra-rare Picapoll grape was almost extinct after phylloxera, because it had little color and little alcohol. It produced the scarce 2012 Les Tallades de Cal Nicolau, a subtle aromatic and fresh red from only 0.2-hectares (because the soils are very compact and phylloxera does not live happily under those conditions); the vines were plantted ungrafted back in 1870, the oldest vineyard in Montsant. Some vines died, but as they died they were replaced. It fermented in 500-liter oak barrels and matured in neutral 225-liter barriques for one year. Having commented on the low color, this vintage had a lot more color than other years, and the wine is also more powerful, more with the profile of a Cari?ena. This is different and more powerful, but still with great acidity and freshness. More mineral (and I'm tempted to say more Cari?ena than the Cari?ena...) Only 602 bottles were filled in April 2014.