Vine crime in Priorat

Appearing in yesterday's edition of La Vanguardia newspaper was the disturbing news of the sabotage of 8,000 young Syrah vines in the Priorat DOC.

According to the report, some unknown persons entered the vineyards of the Ferrer-Bobet winery and administered an herbicide that killed nearly one-third of the winery's vines. The effects of the attack probably took a few days to be noticable. One week ago Friday, the vines were in perfect condition. Then last Thursday, coinciding with a visit to the estate by Robert Mondavi, the winery owners noticed that some vines were dead or dying.

Ferrer-Bobet is a new winery, and plans to start producing wines for the first time with this year's harvest. The affected vines were planted last year at a cost of roughly 120,000 euros. But, according to chief enologist Albert Fontanals, beyond the economic damage is the cost to the morale of the company, which has suffered a criminal attack without precident, at least in this part of the world. But the winery will carry on and is planning to replace the dead vines by hand.