Nita by Meritxell Palleja is a fantastic expression from the Priorat region of Spain and a wine which we instantly fell in love with. Unlike a lot of Priorat wines, it is both soft, generous and warming in the mouth without being over extracted or overwhelmed with oak flavours. The wine is a blend of 45% Grenache, 35% Carignan, 15% Cabernet Sauvignon and 5% Syrah which is fermented in a combination of stainless steel and cement tanks. It has gorgeous dark red fruit flavours, bramble fruit and beautiful spice notes. It is fresh on the finish and is clearly a wine that has been made with a lot of love and care.
Having spent 15 years working under the renowned Alvaro Palacios, Meritxell Palleja decided to go her own way and put all her efforts into her own small project, which she had been working on for several years and had called Nita, named after her grandmother’s house. Nita is a wine which Meritxell had first made in 2004 from small parcels of grapes which she had bought from family and friends. The project grew over the years by acquiring vineyards with her partner and brother, and in 2015 they finally built their own winery in Gratallops.
In addition to Nita, Meritxell also bottles three single-vineyard wines along with a little white wine. The vineyards have their own unique characteristics but the presence of licorella, as it is known in Catalan, is present in all of them. It is a reddish-black slate that is unique to the area. As a result of working with Domaine Leflaive in her early years, Meritxell is a strong believer in Biodynamics and therefore, like most good winemakers, works tirelessly to maintain healthy, living vineyards.
