A family cellar in Batea
Casa Mariol is a family cellar in Batea, a wine village in Terra Alta, in the hills inland from Tarragona. It began in 1945, with the family selling its own wine at local markets. Three generations later they farm around 50 hectares of vines and buy grapes from small growers in the villages nearby.
Their own recipe
Where I come from, vermut was everywhere. Families made it at home and wineries big and small made their own, each to its own recipe. Casa Mariol's vermut is the family's own recipe: white wine, herbs from the hills around Batea, and green walnuts to turn it dark.
That is the Vermut Negre. The Blanco leaves out the walnuts and keeps the rosemary and thyme.
The bottle that travelled
What the third generation changed, from 2007, was everything around the wine. They put their vermut into a one-litre bottle with a plain label that tells you what is inside, where it comes from and how to drink it. The design went on to win awards across Europe.
They took it to Barcelona and opened their own bar. They poured it in New York. They even helped write the book on it, Teoria i pràctica del vermut, in 2015. A drink that had become something grandparents ordered found a new crowd, in Spain and then internationally, and the habit of meeting for a vermut before lunch came back with it.
Today Casa Mariol is a reference for modern Spanish vermut. In 2021 theirs was named the best vermut in Catalonia.
More than vermut
The family makes wine first. Garnatxa blanca and garnatxa negra, the grapes Terra Alta is known for, both certified organic. A rosé, and a Syrah with 36 months of ageing.
And the old sweet wines of the region, which are hard to find outside it: mistela, moscatell, and a vi ranci from a solera started in 1945.
