Nowadays wine is no longer seen as an ordinary drink to compliment meals, like water, but a quality beverage that enhances the tastes combining with an excellent marriage. We can savour and enjoy its variety of aromas, all different depending on whether they are white, rosé or red wines. We can as well find pleasure in savouring the delicious aftertastes and long persistence remaining in our palate, all in all making the event of eating a pleasure more than a need. An event that we will always remember, which will dignify the person who served us and the place we were, helping us to enjoy the senses of life, the taste, smell and sight. A real form of art!

It might be, though, that the one who served us the meal after a great effort of preparation is reproached for having chosen carelessly the wine.

The Ampurdan region should be proud of its wines, with a growing production of better quality, gaining prestige as a high quality vine and gastronomic area. We have a great potential but still not very well known.

The wines of Cooperativa Agrícola of Garriguella, among others in the region, were awarded distinguished prizes in Firatast, a competition which rates the best wines in Catalonia, organised by Mestres Tastavins i Cellerers de Catalunya –Association for the promotion of quality wines. The event, held last Friday 3rd March in Girona, gathered 120 professionals who tasted 170 samples of Catalan wines and cavas.

Among the awarded, Cooperativa of Garriguella, got the following medals: Silver, in the group of sweet wines with Garnatxa Negra, which by the way combines perfectly with bunyols, so typical in these dates; Silver Leaf with Puntils Rosat and Gold Medal with Puntils Blanc. This year’s awards, besides the ones obtained last year, consolidate an upward trend in quality.

These awards prove that quality is not only the consequence of a mere chance or the result of a good harvest, but the effort of lots of people, experts and wine growers who work day after day taking care of wine and grapes in pursuit of best quality and also caring for the landscape that embellish the region for the pleasure of both, natives and visitors, who keep coming back delighted as they are, thus making tourism another source of income besides agriculture.

Ampurdan people must be proud of our landscape, our cooking and our wines and we should all contribute to the consolidation of these wealthy factors, otherwise our territory would fall into abandonment due to the ageing of agricultural population as a result of a lack of incentives for young people. As a matter of fact this is the current situation for agriculture in general. The vine sector, as well as other crops which, like grapes, give out lots of surplus paid at low market prices, is experiencing a difficult economic situation.

The awareness of our Ampurdan wines will make us appreciate them for their quality and also to identify them with the region we live in, which no doubt we want to see preserved. It would be very sad the sight of a desolated territory, as it may be if the current circumstances do not change for the best.

What could be done to avoid this situation? Nowadays we find wines form elsewhere in the world, we can choose, we know that our wine is excellent and we have proof of its origin if we buy it directly from the producer or from the market with the seal of quality D.O. Empordà. We can do the same in restaurants; ordering it will enliven the sector, currently saturated with wines from around the world. Restaurants can be a profitable showcase in which to display our wines, as it is the case in France, where we can find local wines in a greater part and foreign wines in a minority. If we enhance the region promoting our wines, emphasizing its quality, we will all enjoy the benefits: restaurateurs, producers and residents form the region in general.