Montsagre: Picual Perfection Among the Empeltre

“I learned every­thing I know in Horta,” Pablo Picasso once said.

The Spanish painter spent two short but key peri­ods of his life in the lit­tle vil­lage of Horta de Sant Joan, in the Catalan province of Tarragona, north­east of Spain.

In the sum­mer of 1898, he was just a six­teen-year-old boy recov­er­ing from a lung dis­ease. In 1909, he came back with his part­ner Fernande Olivier.

The land­scapes of Horta are said to have had an impact on the artist when he was at a cre­ative turn­ing point lead­ing to Cubism.

Large sways of pine forests, vine­yards, olive groves and almond trees dot­ted with medieval vil­lages and sur­rounded by the impos­ing pres­ence of the Montsagre (lit­er­ally, ​“sacred moun­tain”), and the ver­ti­cal­ity of the Benet Rocks.

The Catalan Terra Alta comarca and the adja­cent Aragonese Matarranya share an essen­tial and unspoiled Mediterranean land­scape.

Here is where Albert Barrobés and his fam­ily pro­duce their Montsagre olive oil where, on assign­ment for Olive Oil Times, I met him at his estate between Horta de Sant Joan and Caseres, a neigh­bor­ing vil­lage.

“Many land­scapes cap­ti­vate you, but this one, on top of being a cap­ti­vat­ing land­scape, is the land­scape of my roots and of my grand­par­ents,” Barrobés explained.

Barrobés, an archi­tect by pro­fes­sion, speaks with pas­sion about his land and his oil. Son of Catalan emi­grants, he lived a good share of his life in Venezuela. This explains why, when he speaks, he com­bines the local dialect of Catalan and a Spanish with a Caribbean accent.

“My grand­par­ents worked here until they had to move to Barcelona at the begin­ning of the 20^th cen­tury. My par­ents also migrated to Venezuela. But later on, they came back to meet their roots again,” he said as we walk across his 100-hectare estate where pine forests pleas­antly alter­nate with ter­races of olive groves.

Terres de l’Ebre — the lands of the river Ebro in Catalan — where Horta de Sant Joan is placed, has been a Unesco Reserve of the Biosphere since 2013 due to its com­plex mix of plains, marshes, deltas, moun­tains and val­leys.

In this place, organic farm­ing, said Barrobés, was a log­i­cal and a voca­tional step. ​“We have been pro­duc­ing organic for years. And we are very much inter­ested in the sus­tain­abil­ity both of this activ­ity and this envi­ron­ment. Because we are sur­rounded by forests that need to be man­aged with com­mon sense.”

The tech­niques they use for their organic pro­duc­tion are diverse.

Next to the barn where Barrobés keeps his machin­ery, in a field where wheat has already been har­vested, Pyrenean horses graze. ​“They usu­ally go down the olive groves. They don’t like olive trees sprouts, so they help us con­trol­ling the weeds,” he pointed out.

“We also use kaolin, which is a white min­eral, to ​‘paint’ the trees so they are less attrac­tive for the flies with­out using pes­ti­cides.”

Montsagre’s estate lies in an area at 530 meters above sea level. Long sun­shine hours and lit­tle pre­cip­i­ta­tion lead to a lower pro­duc­tion here com­pared with other Spanish regions.

“This is an alka­line land and there are a lot of rocks under­ground. This, together with the cli­mate we have here, gives us a num­ber of cli­mate and geo­log­i­cal traits that make olives pro­duced here of a very good qual­ity,” Barrobés explained. His organic del­i­cate Picual won a Best in Class Award at the 2018 NYIOOC World Olive Oil Competition — one of only 16 oils to achieve the dis­tinc­tion among 1,000 con­tenders.

When Albert Barrobés’ father replanted these fields some 30 years ago, he made an unusual deci­sion in this county by plant­ing Picual, a vari­ety typ­i­cal from Jaén, which is the most com­mon in Spain.

In spite of being out of its ​“nat­ural” region, the cul­ti­var gives good results in Horta de Sant Joan. However, this is Empeltre ter­ri­tory, an area which com­prises the Bajo Aragón region, the Ebro val­ley and the Terra Alta in Tarragona.

“These olives have always been much appre­ci­ated as black table olives, but if pressed when olives are still green, we can get an extra­or­di­nary fruity oil,” he told OOT. ​“For us, Empeltre is an added value because it is basi­cally known just here.”

Not far from Montsagre’s estate, Barrobés takes a detour from the main road to show what he calls one of Horta’s main mon­u­ments: A mon­u­men­tal olive tree called Lo Parot, or ​“the big father” in Catalan.

More than 8 meters high and a 15-meters perime­ter, this giant has been part of this land­scape for over 2,000 years.