Porrera

The church bell in Porrera strikes seven and the echo bounces off slate roofs louder than the traffic. There isn’t any. What you hear instead is the soft clink of bottles in a cyclist’s pannier and, somewhere below the 316-metre ridge, the mechanical breathing of a fermentation tank that has been working since last night’s harvest. Dawn light catches the mica in the black licorella slate; the whole village sparkles like a wet road.

Porrera sits halfway up a corkscrew road that leaves the C-242 two kilometres after Falset. The tarmac narrows to a single track, 18% in places, stone walls brushing both wing mirrors. Brits who arrive in rental X5s usually meet a local grower in a 20-year-old Panda halfway up; one of them has to reverse. Hint: it won’t be the Panda. Leave the SUV in Falset and bring something you can park in a phone box.

Once the engine cools, the scale of the place becomes clear. Forty-three houses, two bars, one grocery the size of a London kitchen, 435 permanent residents and twelve wineries. The density is absurd: walk two minutes in any direction and you trip over a family cellar that sells wine critics pay three figures to drink. Calçots, old vine Garnacha and liquid liquorice – that is the short menu here.

Stone, slate and centuries of thirst

The village plan is medieval, built for mules not Minis. Passages duck under houses, emerge as flights of stairs, then flatten into terraces where grapes dry on reed mats. Every wall is dry-stone, every roof tile hand-split; even the public laundry trough has been mended rather than replaced. Look up and the Sierra de Montsant closes the horizon like a broken crown; look down and the Cortiella river is a silver thread 200 metres below.

Water has always been the obsession. Porrera’s old communal cisterns – cupes – still collect winter rain; their stone lids are carved with the year 1789, the same vintage as the French Revolution and some of the gnarliest Carignan vines still in production. Dry-farmed vineyards cling to gradients that would disqualify a ski run. A single hectare can contain 2,000 terraces; picking it takes 30 people a week, all paid by the crate. That is why Priorat bottles start at €18 on the cellar door and climb to €180 if the critic scores begin with a 9.

Tasting without the theatre

Winery visits are refreshingly low-key. At Mas d’en Gil you ring a bell, someone’s aunt appears with a glass and the tasting happens next to the stainless-steel tanks. No gift shop, no bus parking, just five wines and a hand-written bill. Across the lane, Ferrer Bobet’s glass-and-steel bodega looks like a Bond villain’s lair but the staff still apologise for the “mess” – three harvest crates and a pair of secateurs. Book at least a week ahead; during harvest (mid-September to mid-October) many close to visitors because every bunch has to be in by dusk.

If reservations slip through your fingers, buy a single bottle from the cooperative shop on Carrer Major, sit on the church steps and taste with your ears. Swallow, and you can feel the slate through the fruit: graphite, black tea, a finish that lasts longer than most pop songs. Alcohol levels regularly top 15%, so the local trick is to add a splash of water – heresy in Mayfair, common sense here.

Walking off the wine

The GR-174 (Camí de Sirga) skirts the village, then climbs 400 metres to the Montsant rim in 3 km. The path is engineered for mule trains: stone stairs, switch-backs, occasional iron handrail. From the crest Priorat spreads out like a crumpled black quilt stitched with green. Allow two hours up, one down, and carry more water than you think; the slate reflects heat like a griddle. In January the same trail can be edged with ice – Porrera’s altitude gives it a continental snap that surprises visitors expecting mild Mediterranean weather.

Shorter loops thread the vineyards directly below the houses. These are signed as “caminos de sirga” but are really just gaps between walls wide enough for a wheelbarrow. Follow them at dusk and you’ll meet growers pruning by head-torch, humming along to Catalan radio. Stop, ask whose plot this is, and you’ll probably be handed the secateurs for a remedial lesson. Brits used to RHS etiquette will be relieved to know you are allowed to cut inward-facing shoots; the locals call it “giving the vine some air”.

What to eat when the cooker’s off

Porrera does not do dinner. By 21:30 even the dogs have turned in. Lunch is the main event and on weekdays there are two choices: Cal Porrerà (the village B&B with three tables) or the cooperative bar where the set menu is €14 and the wine is sold by the porró – a glass jug that looks like a genie lamp and pours a scarlet ribbon straight into your mouth. Miss the 14:00 cutoff and you’ll be eating crisps until breakfast.

Dishes are built for calorie replacement. Botifarra amb mongetes – pale sausage, white beans, splash of olive oil strong enough to make you cough. All cremat is literally “burnt garlic”: snails, ham bone and twenty cloves reduced to sticky darkness. Vegetarians get escalivada, cold aubergine and pepper that tastes of bonfire ash and is better than it sounds. Pudding is either mel i mató (fresh goat cheese, honey, walnuts) or a shot of ranci, the oxidised wine that smells like Christmas and shuts the conversation down.

Sunday is supermarket-closed day and the only place serving is the cooperative. Queue with the locals, practise your Catalan numbers and do not ask for the wine list; you get what’s open, usually last year’s Garnacha, and you’ll be grateful.

Beds, banks and other practicalities

Accommodation is scarce. Cal Porrerà has five rooms, stone walls half a metre thick, no television and a key-safe rather than reception. British guests compare it to “staying with a well-off friend who’s gone skiing”. Rates hover round €110 including breakfast (fresh coca bread, tomato rub, olive oil, coffee strong enough to float a spoon). There is a small pool on the roof terrace, but it faces north and is mainly for show in April. Alternative is an Airbnb in one of the restored casas de pages; most sleep six, so solo travellers end up paying €180 for space they don’t need.

Money: no ATM, no card machine in the grocery, and the nearest cash is a CaixaBank in Falset 8 km away. Fill your wallet before you climb. Petrol is also back in Falset; run the tank low and you’ll be coasting downhill in neutral, praying no tractor appears round the bend.

Mobile signal is patchy. Vodafone and EE pick up a bar if you stand on the church balcony; O2 users need to walk 200 metres towards the cemetery for 4G. The village Wi-Fi password is written on a blackboard in the bar and changes whenever Barcelona Football Club loses.

When to come, when to stay away

Late April brings calçot season – long onions grilled until charcoal-black, peeled like a banana, dipped in romesco and eaten from a roof tile. Tourist numbers double but are still only 80 people, so book lunch. May and early June are perfect for walking: warm days, cool nights, poppies punching red holes in the vineyards. September is harvest buzz, purple hands, grape trucks reversing at 6 a.m. Avoid August weekends when temperatures top 38 °C and the slate radiates like a storage heater. December is quiet, misty and can be magical – but check the forecast; snow can block the access road for half a day and the village keeps only one shovel.

Leave the car behind one evening. Walk to the edge of the lighted streets, let your eyes adjust and look south. The Priorat hills roll away until they meet the sea, a black cut-out against a softer black. No sound, no neon, just the smell of cold slate and fermenting Garnacha drifting uphill. It is the sort of silence you forget exists until it finds you again – and for that alone Porrera is worth the hairpins.