Familia Torres offered a genuine wine journey through the territories and generations of the winemaking family, from Penedès to Chile, in a tasting held yesterday, Tuesday 3 February, as part of Barcelona Wine Week (BWW). Mireia Torres, Director of Innovation and Sustainability at Familia Torres and a member of the fifth generation, together with the winery’s sommelier, Sergi Castro, presented a carefully curated selection of iconic wines created by the fourth and fifth generations. These wines reflect, through their diversity, the strength of the family tradition and the constant drive to innovate in order to keep the legacy moving forward.
According to Mireia Torres, “Carrying the Torres surname is not a privilege, but a responsibility shared across generations: to honour what we have received and transform it so that it remains meaningful in the world to come.” She went on to emphasise: “That responsibility involves protecting the environment and all the people who make our wines possible. If we are remembered for this care, we will have stayed true to the spirit that has united all generations of our family.”
Wines that reflect the evolution of the family legacy
The tasting began in Val do Salnés, Rías Baixas, with Blanco Granito 2023. To create this great Albariño, the fifth generation found inspiration in the area’s ancient Roman granite wine presses. Building on that legacy, and using grapes from the six-hectare walled vineyard surrounding Pazo Torre Penelas, Miquel and Mireia Torres decided to ferment and age the wine in ovoid tanks made of Galician granite, thereby reinforcing its identity, freshness and ageing potential.
From there, the tasting moved to Conca de Barberà with Milmanda 2022, which illustrated how a young Miguel A. Torres, fourth generation, was already committed in the 1970s to working with his own vineyards in exceptional sites to craft great wines. The Milmanda estate passed into the family’s hands and, convinced of the extraordinary potential of this location, they began planting Chardonnay. Over the years, and as the result of meticulous work in the vineyard and winery, the combination of finesse, volume and aromatic expression has established Milmanda as one of Spain’s great benchmark white wines.
The journey then leapt to the Southern Hemisphere, just a few kilometres from the Pacific Ocean, with Escaleras de Empedrado 2018, one of the family’s most distinctive projects in Chile. This 100% Pinot Noir, produced in very limited quantities and sourced from the country’s first vineyard planted on slate terraces, reflects the pioneering vision of the fourth generation, who established the winery in Chile in 1979 as the country’s first foreign producer, and the determination of the fifth generation to create unique and characterful wines in the Andean country.
Back in Catalonia, Mas de la Rosa 2021 brought attendees closer to one of the most personal projects of the fifth generation. In the search for a unique site in Priorat in which to create an exceptional wine, Miquel Torres fell in love with this vineyard the first time he saw it: goblet-trained Carinyena and Garnacha vines, more than 80 years old, laid out before him like an authentic natural amphitheatre. Made with very gentle extractions and an ageing process that fully respects the character of the terroir, Mas de la Rosa is a wine of great finesse that expresses, with the utmost purity, the vineyard from which it comes.
The journey continued with Pago del Cielo 2020, considered the ultimate expression of the family’s finest vineyards in Ribera del Duero: El Obispo and Las Tenadas. Driven by the fifth generation, this wine underscores the family’s desire to consolidate projects with a strong individual identity in Spain’s leading wine regions, exploring new ways of expressing Tinto Fino (Tempranillo) while remaining true to the elegance and balance that define the Familia Torres style.
The tasting then returned to Penedès to present Jean Leon Vinya Le Havre 2021, a wine that connects the legacy of the Santander-born Ceferino Carrión (Jean Leon) with the continuity and commitment assumed by Familia Torres since the winemaker entrusted them with his project in 1994. Mireia Torres, director of this small winery in Penedès, explained how this single-vineyard Cabernet Sauvignon and Cabernet Franc wine pays tribute to Jean Leon’s pioneering spirit, maintaining an elegant and classic style that remains faithful to its origins and to the vision of its founder.
Still in the heart of Penedès, Mas La Plana 2019 highlighted the dialogue between the third and fourth generations. Born from the non-conformity of a very young Miguel A. Torres, who in the 1960s decided to plant Cabernet Sauvignon on the Mas La Plana estate, defying the conventions of the time and even the doubts of his own father, Miguel Torres Carbó, Mas La Plana revolutionised the Spanish wine scene in 1979, when it prevailed in a blind tasting in Paris against some of the world’s great wines, and has since become an international icon for its depth, character and ageing capacity.
By closing the tasting with Grans Muralles 2020, at the foot of the Prades mountains, Familia Torres sought to highlight the deeper meaning of its legacy. This wine, born next to the ancient walls of the Poblet monastery, represents the intergenerational project of recovering ancestral varieties launched in the 1980s by Miguel A. Torres and strongly promoted today by the fifth generation. Grans Muralles is a great Mediterranean wine that incorporates, in its blend of Cariñena, Garnacha and Monastrell, the pre-phylloxera varieties Garró and Querol and, vintage after vintage, writes a new chapter in this history built and shared across generations.
