Nulles

The brick water-tower painted with a wine-logo is the only clue you’ve arrived. Google Maps gives up 200 metres short, so when the lane narrows to a single track between vineyards, keep going. Suddenly the vines part and you’re staring at a cathedral-sized cellar of honey-coloured stone and parabolic brick arches—the Catedral del Vi—built in 1917 when phylloxera had just finished wiping out most of Europe’s grapes. Nulles decided to respond with architecture.

A village that still clocks in with the seasons

Five hundred and forty-four residents, 231 metres above sea level, and not a souvenir shop in sight. The pace is set by buds, blossom and harvest, not by tour buses. Stone houses squeeze into a grid of lanes just wide enough for a tractor; ground-floor doors stay open so you can glimpse garden tools, oil drums and the odd elderly dog asleep on terracotta tiles. At 08:00 the bakery on Carrer Major sells coques—thin, pizza-flat breads topped with sugar and pine nuts—still warm from a wood oven that’s been in service since the 1930s. By 13:00 the baker has swept the floor and gone home; if you haven’t bought by then, you’ll wait until tomorrow.

There is no cash machine. Cards work at the winery, nowhere else. The nearest ATM is five minutes away in Vila-rodona, so fill your pockets before you arrive.

Why people drive an hour from Barcelona for a 90-minute tour

Weekends run like clockwork: gates open at 10:00, first English tour at noon. A guide called Marta (agricultural engineering graduate, part-time DJ) hands out tasting glasses the size of goldfish bowls and leads the group straight into the nave. The acoustics are accidental—no architect, just a farmer who wanted a single open space cool enough to stop wine oxidising in summer. Sunlight filters through perforated brickwork and lands on rows of stainless-steel tanks that look almost ecclesiastical.

Tastings are generous: five wines, starting with a xarel·lo that tastes like green apple and ending with a brut nature cava aged 24 months—crisper than the big Penedès houses, less yeasty, dangerously easy at 11:30 in the morning. Children get grape juice and permission to sprint between the arches; parents get a warning that the metal vineyard walkway bans stilettos. The whole circuit takes 90 minutes. After that you’re back outside, blinking in bright light, wondering how the time disappeared so fast.

Weekday visits exist but need at least eight people and an email a week ahead. Turn up unannounced and you’ll meet a locked gate and a dog who’s heard every sob story in Catalan and English.

Between almond blossom and the smell of diesel

Leave the cellar and keep walking west; the tarmac stops after the last house. A gravel lane snakes between emparrado vines—trained high so tractors can pass underneath—and dry-stone margins thrown up by hand a century ago. In February the almond buds pop white against brick-red soil; by April the same branches look like someone’s dusted them with green icing sugar. The loop to the abandoned masia of Cal Rafelet and back is 4 km, flat enough for a hybrid bike but dusty after rain. Signage is patchy; download the免费 pdf from the winery site or you’ll end up in somebody’s irrigation ditch.

Summer hikers should start early. At 700 ft the nights cool off, but midday in July still hits 34 °C and there is zero shade. Bring two litres of water; the village fountain looks decorative but isn’t potable.

Food that doesn’t travel

The winery shop stocks what locals actually eat: mild goat-cheese from Mas el Guitart, fuet sausages cured in mountain air, and jars of honey scented with rosemary that grows wild along the train tracks. A calçotada in season (January–March) means queuing for a table at Cal Ganxo in neighbouring Valls—Nulles itself has no restaurant—but the drive is ten minutes and the sauce is lighter than Mexican mole, so you can still taste the wine.

If you’re self-catering, the Saturday market in Valls (08:00–14:00) sells calçots by the hundred, tied in newspaper bundles. They travel badly; eat them the same day or your car will smell like burnt spring onion for weeks.

When the church bell rings twice

Sant Esteve’s parish church is nothing grand—stone, single nave, bell turret added in 1760 after lightning split the first one. Step inside and you’ll see the scale that matters: a timber roof low enough to hear whispers, frescoes of local saints painted by a travelling Valencian who accepted payment in olive oil. The feast day on 26 December turns the plaza into a dance floor. Locals insist it’s “for us, not for tourists”; visitors are welcome but there are no wristbands, no overpriced mulled wine, just sardanas danced by grandparents who still remember the steps from Franco’s time.

August brings outdoor cinema on a bedsheet screen rigged between two plane trees. Films are subtitled in Catalan; bring a cushion and a jacket—the altitude means nights drop to 18 °C even in midsummer.

Getting here, getting out

The nearest high-speed stop is Camp de Tarragona, 25 minutes by taxi. Renting a car is simpler: take the AP-2 from Barcelona, exit 11, then follow the C-37 for twelve minutes. Trains on the R4 regional line halt at Vila-rodona four times a day; from there a local bus runs to Nulles on schooldays only, timetable designed around 14-year-olds, not tourists.

Leave time for the drive back in daylight. The road twists between vineyards and sudden masias; after dark the only illumination is the occasional LED scarecrow designed to keep wild boar from the grapes. It works on drivers too—everyone slows down, which is probably for the best after five generous pours.

Nulles won’t fill an itinerary. It will, however, reset your body clock to agricultural time, let you taste wine in a building that looks like Gaudi’s barn, and remind you that 544 people can still keep a village alive if the grapes cooperate. Just remember to book first, bring cash second, and don’t wear heels.