Torroja del Priorat

The church bell strikes seven and the village loudspeaker crackles to life. A woman's voice reads yesterday's death notices from Reus, 35 kilometres away. In Torroja del Priorat, population 134, this passes for the morning news. By half past, the only sound is slate crunching under vineyard boots as locals head up the terraces to prune garnacha vines that cling to slopes steeper than a ship's ladder.

The Middle of Nowhere, Exactly 332 Metres Up

Torroja sits at the dead centre of Priorat, a comarca where the mountains look like they've been turned inside out to reveal their dark grey bones. The slate here—locals call it llicorella—doesn't just crunch underfoot; it glints like broken obsidian and radiates heat back at the vines, giving Priorat wines their trademark mineral punch. At 332 metres above sea level, the village catches enough breeze to shave the edge off summer's furnace, but not enough to disturb the silence that settles each afternoon like dust.

The approach road from Reus airport (Ryanair, Tuesday and Saturday, £38 return if you book while the pilots are still on strike) starts civilised enough. Then the tarmac narrows to a single track that corkscrews up the mountain like a helter-skelter built by someone who'd had too much of the local 15-percent red. Hire the smallest car the rep offers. That Fiat Panda will feel like a Tardis when you meet a cement lorry coming the other way, and you will.

Wine Before Wi-Fi

Mobile signal arrives in Torroja like a shy guest—briefly, unpredictably, and never at dinner time. This is not a bug; it's a feature. The village's three working wineries (up from one in 2005) prefer appointments by email, but they'll answer the landline if you ring during elevenses. Celler Joan Simó opens Tuesdays and Thursdays for groups of four to eight; €15 buys you a walk through the old co-op building and three glasses of wine strong enough to make the mountain road back down seem almost sensible.

The tasting notes matter less than the stories. Ask Jordi why they still foot-tread the garnacha in open vats. He'll show you the scar on his knee from 1998, then pour you a wine that tastes like blackberries rolled in graphite. The vineyard tour involves actual walking—up 30-degree slopes, between dry-stone walls built by Romans and patched by every generation since. Trainers suffice; hiking boots mark you as the sort who brings a Garmin to Sunday lunch.

What Passes for a High Street

Torroja's commercial district runs for exactly 23 metres. On one side: the ajuntament, open Monday mornings for arguing about tractor permits. On the other: Bar-Restaurant Cal Tico, shutters down more often than up. The village shop operates from a front room on Carrer Major. Opening hours are 9-1, unless Maria's granddaughter has a dentist appointment, in which case there's a scribbled note on the door and you'll need to drive to Gratallops for milk.

The nearest cash machine lives in that same neighbouring village, eight kilometres of hairpins away. It runs out of €20 notes on Friday evenings when the weekenders arrive from Barcelona with empty tanks and empty wallets. Bring cash. The winery tours, the almonds at the bar, even the honesty-box honesty box—all prefer folding money to contactless taps that would only freeze anyway when the thermometer hits 38°C.

Lunch at the Only Table

There is one place that serves food every day, more or less. The restaurant doesn't have a name on the door; everyone calls it "Cal Tico" even though Tico died in 2014. Inside are six tables, paper cloths, and a television permanently tuned to a Valencian soap opera with the sound off. The menú del día costs €18 and arrives in three waves: escalivada of aubergine and pepper (room temperature, smoked in yesterday's vine cuttings), beef stew thickened with Priorat red, and crema catalana that still carries the faint click of the cook's blow-torch.

Vegetarians get the same stew minus the beef; vegans receive a sympathetic shrug and an extra plate of olives. Wine is included—house garnacha that would retail in London for £18 a bottle. Ask for water and you get the village tap, high in calcium and faintly metallic from all that slate. Drink it; your hangover will thank you.

Sunset from El Balconet

The single tourist attraction, if Instagram hashtags are any guide, is a stone balcony five minutes above the church. El Balconet started life as a loading bay for mule trains; now it's where visitors watch the sun drop behind the Montsant range while swigging €4 supermarket cava because they forgot to book a winery. The slate turns bronze, then bruise-purple, and the silence becomes so complete you can hear your own pulse.

Bring a jacket even in July. At altitude the temperature falls 12 degrees within an hour of sunset, and the wind that keeps the vines fungus-free has no patience for British notions of what constitutes summer. The walk back down is lit only by house windows and the occasional torch app of someone still trying to find enough bars to post a story.

When Not to Come

August is stupid-hot and the village smells of diesel from the harvest tractors. Easter weekend brings coach parties who block the single through-road and photograph each other pretending to stomp grapes that won't be picked for another five months. November's Fiesta Major is authentic—paella for 200 served in the school playground, brass band, fireworks that bounce off the mountain and scare the dogs—but accommodation within 20 km sells out nine months ahead.

The sweet spots are late April, when the almond blossom foams white against black slate, and mid-October, when the vines burn scarlet and the air smells of fermenting must. Both seasons guarantee empty roads, open wineries, and hotel rooms at mid-week prices that wouldn't cover a Travelodge in Slough.

Leaving Without a Scratch

Check-out time in Torroja is whenever you can find someone to take the key. The nearest petrol is back in Reus, so fill up before you ascend. The road down rewards a cautious left foot; overheated brakes smell like burnt sugar and sound like a bag of spanners. At the bottom, where the tarmac widens and phone signal returns in a rush of forgotten notifications, you'll pass a sign pointing back uphill. "Torroja del Priorat—proper Priorat wine country," it reads. Someone has scrawled underneath in English: "And don't forget to breathe."

They mean the altitude, mostly. But also the quiet.