Mollet de Peralada

The tractors start at dawn. By the time the church bell of Sant Andreu strikes seven, half a dozen machines are already threading between the vines, their tyres dusted white with the chalky soil of Alt Empordà. From the village edge you can watch the entire choreography: a red Case IH turning at the end of a row, a silver Renault following precisely in its tracks, both drivers raising a hand in passing like cyclists on a country lane. This is Mollet de Peralada’s morning rush hour – 215 inhabitants, 400 hectares of vineyard, and almost no traffic lights.

A grid of streets, a map of wine

Mollet sits four kilometres inland from its flashier neighbour Peralada, home to a castle-casino and a summer music festival that draws Barcelona’s well-heeled. Here there is no castle, no spa, no Michelin stars. What you get is a rectangle of stone houses arranged around a single square, a bar whose opening hours depend on the owner’s mood, and a cooperative winery whose stainless-steel tanks glint behind a modest façade. British visitors usually arrive by accident – a self-catering party en route to the Costa Brava who spot the brown “DO Empordà” sign from the C-260 and swerve in for a bottle. They stay because the car park is empty, the tasting counter is staffed by the actual winemaker, and the views stretch clear to the French border.

The village layout is simple enough to learn in a five-minute stroll. Carrer Major runs east–west; Carrer de l’Església north–south. At their junction the church squats low and square, its sandstone warmed to the colour of pale ale. The only ornament is a 19th-century clock that loses three minutes a week; locals set their watches by the bell, not the other way round. Houses are built to a standard Catalan template: stone ground floor, upper walls rendered in ochre, wooden balconies painted the same green as the cooperative’s tractors. Look closely and you’ll notice iron rings set into the façades – medieval hitching posts repurposed as plant holders for geraniums.

Tasting notes and tractor tracks

Wine is the obvious draw. The cooperative sells young red blends that taste suspiciously like a Côtes-du-Rhône at half the price – grenache and carignan softened with a dash of syrah. Bring your own plastic five-litre jug and they’ll fill it from the tap for €9; a labelled bottle costs €4.50. If you want something more polished, drive ten minutes to La Vinyeta, an organic estate run by a couple who met at agricultural college in Lleida. Their English is fluent, the tasting sheet is printed in Comic Sans, and the tour finishes with a slab of sheep’s-milk cheese drizzled with honey from hives tucked among the vines. Weekends book up fast between May and October; email at least three days ahead for the 11 a.m. English slot.

You don’t need to be an oenophile to enjoy the landscape. A network of farm tracks links Mollet to the hilltop village of Garriguella (population 743) and the Romanesque monastery at Vilabertran (population 445). Distances are short – three kilometres here, five there – but carry water; shade is provided only by the occasional almond tree. In late April the ground between the vines erupts with poppies the exact shade of a Royal Mail postbox. By June the farmers have mown them flat, replacing colour with the scent of sun-baked fennel. Cyclists on gravel bikes love the ham-flat plateau, though the surface alternates between smooth concrete and fist-sized gravel that pings against bottle cages. Road riders stick to the C-260, a shoulder-less artery where Spanish lorries drive as if pursued by demons.

Saturday shopping, Sunday silence

Practicalities first: there is no cash machine. The nearest ATM is in Espolla, four kilometres away, and it charges €2 per withdrawal. The village shop opens 9–1, 5–8, except Saturday afternoon and all Sunday. Stock up in Figueres before you arrive – the Mercadona on the bypass sells everything from Dorset cereal to gluten-free pasta. The local bar, Ca l’Andreu, does excellent coffee (€1.20) and keeps English tea bags for the weekly British villa crowd, but food is limited to toasted ham-and-cheese sandwiches. If you want a proper meal you’ll need wheels. Try Restaurant Cal Regueral in Peralada for suquet de peix (fish stew) at €18, or drive 20 minutes to the coast at l’Escala where family-run spots grill sardines over vine cuttings for €12 a plate.

Accommodation is mostly self-catering. Three stone houses have been converted into two-bedroom rentals with fenced pools and outdoor pizza ovens. Prices hover around £140 a night in May, £220 in August. The thick stone walls keep interiors cool until about 30 °C; above that the portable air-conditioning units wheeze like elderly Labradors. One cottage provides bikes – heavy hybrids with chains that need oiling – ideal for pootling to the bakery in Garriguella, closed Tuesday. Mobile signal is patchy on the vineyard tracks; download Google Maps offline before you leave the house.

Fiestas, fireworks and the autumn tractor parade

Visit in late November and you’ll collide with the Fiesta de Sant Andreu. The programme is printed on a single A4 sheet taped to the church door: Saturday night sardana dancing in the square, Sunday morning mass followed by a calçotada (spring-onion barbecue) in the sports field. Entry is €15, wine included, payment to the lady with the plastic bucket. There are no fireworks, no fairground rides, no tourist office. What you get is the entire village seated at trestle tables, grandparents passing babies along the row, teenagers sneaking vodka into their Coke bottles. If you attend, bring your own plate and cutlery; plastic is frowned upon.

September is harvest month. Tractors towing grape hoppers queue outside the cooperative from 6 a.m., engines idling with the patient rhythm of a Post Office line. The air smells like crushed blackberries mixed with diesel – an acquired perfume. This is work, not theatre; stand clear when the foreman waves a tractor backwards. If you want to photograph the scene, ask first. A polite “Bon dia, pot ser faig una foto?” usually earns a shrug and a half-smile.

When to come, when to leave

Spring brings waist-high grass and temperatures perfect for walking – 18 °C at midday, cool enough at night for a jumper. Autumn is quieter, the vines turning traffic-light red before leaf fall. August is hot, often 35 °C by eleven; the stone houses cope better than concrete villas on the coast, but you’ll still end up driving to the beach. Roses and l’Escala are 25 minutes away – busy, yes, but the water is cleaner than the Costa del Sol and the sand coarser, more like a Dorset shingle ridge.

Winter is a gamble. Night frosts can drop to –2 °C, beautiful at dawn when the vines wear sugar-coating, but the Tramuntana wind whistles through balcony rails and power cuts last long enough to drain phone batteries. Some cottage owners shut from November to March; check before you book a festive escape.

Leave before you run out of milk, before the church clock becomes too familiar, before you start recognising each tractor by its engine note. Mollet de Peralada isn’t trying to charm you; it simply gets on with growing grapes and living quietly. That, for many Brits raised on Costa karaoke and all-day breakfasts, is the real surprise – a village happy to sell you wine, lend you a corkscrew, then leave you to pour your own glass while the sun slips behind the Albera hills.