Terra Alta

Terra Alta is a Spanish Denominación de Origen (DO) (Denominació d’Origen in Catalan) for wines located in the west of the province of Tarragona (Catalonia, Spain) and covers 12 inland municipalities. As the name indicates (Terra Alta = High Land) the area is in the mountains. It features in a number of Picasso’s paintings.Traditionally, due to its geographical isolation, this area traditionally only made wine for local consumption and has only recently started to produce modern Mediterranean style wines.Several cooperative wineries were designed and built in the 1920s by Cèsar Martinell, a student of Antoni Gaudí, and are notable for their modernist architectural style.HistoryIn the times of the ancient Romans, the road from Zaragoza to Tortosa passed through the area, and is probably when grape growing was first introduced. In the Middle Ages, the Knights Templar planted vines, but the geographical distance to markets and to ports meant that a lot of vineyards were converted to olive groves instead.There are extant legal documents on the regulation of the grape and wine industry: Las Costums d’Orta dating from 1296 and Las Costums de Miravet from 1319.