Inside an Old Wine Vat Shelter (Catalonia)
I recently revisited the wine vats in the Flequer’s Valley—perhaps you remember some of the photographs I took it there. On this occasion, I want to show you the inside one of the main buildings in the l’Escudelleta Wine Vats constructed during the 19th century.
As you can see, the building is constructed by stacking stone on stone, without any kind of cement or mortar. This technique is called dry stone and it was popular in Catalonia. The only part of the building with a different structure is the wine vat itself: it was constructed to prevent leaks, so they used lime mortar and rounded ceramic tiles called ‘cairons’ to seal the interior.
The metal door is the entrance to the wine vat; they are usually cylindrical in shape and around three meters depth. The log seen in the back and the broken stone to the right-bottom were part of a press for the skins, stalks, and pips that remained after the alcohol fermentation. These were pressed to save as much wine as possible.
As Always, you can get your print or download this photo as wallpaper in the links below:
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