Standing outside the huge, stone-faced wine emporium in Palafrugell that is Grau today, it’s hard to imagine that this thriving operation began in 1951 as a tiny bar-cum-bodega in the centre of town, where local customers would stand in line ready to fill up their plastic containers with bulk wine and bear them home.
Grau continues to be family-owned and family-run but the shop – more of a wine superstore these days – is now located on the outskirts of Palafrugell, occupying over 1,200 square metres and containing upwards of 9,000 different wines and spirits.
The customer base has broadened beyond Palafrugell and the province of Girona to embrace all of Spain plus half a dozen European countries. This is holiday playground par excellence – the best Costa Brava beaches are close by – and interspersed with the Catalan number plates in Grau’s car park you’ll see registrations from France, Germany, Belgium, the Netherlands, the UK or Switzerland. There’s also an extensive online shop, so if you unearthed an interesting bottle while on holiday around the corner in Calella or Tamariu, you can order it online and have it delivered back home.
A team of well-informed, multilingual sales people is on hand to advise, headed by the knowledgeable sommelier-manager Eduard Solà. There are also touch-screen information points at the entrance: select your working language, search for the wine that’s on your mind and up comes the full technical data and where to find it in-store. It feels a bit like going to IKEA, only less exhausting and confusing to navigate – and a lot more fun.
The range is vast and eclectic, from a Perelada Blanc Pescador at €3.10 to a 2012 Pingus at €1512.50, the latter stored with other treasures like Romanée Conti, Petrus and Finca Dofi in an air-conditioned holy of holies named Selecciò de Grans Vins. At the back of the shop there’s a wine bar with a monthly-changing selection of open wines to taste. Alternatively you can buy a favourite bottle in the shop and for a modest corkage fee enjoy it at the bar with some top tapas. Grau has even thoughtfully provided a play area for bored kids so wine lovers can devote their full attention to their purchases.
Spanish wines are organised by DOQs (Priorat and Rioja) and DOs, from Abona through to Yecla. Catalan wines top the best-seller list – Solà notes that since the Catalan independence movement has gained momentum, local people are more inclined than ever to favour their own wines. The first section by the entrance – appropriately, given Grau’s location – is devoted to newly trendy Empordà, where a generation of young winemakers is producing decent, well-made wines (Arché Pagès, Mas Oller, Gelamà or Martí Fabra among others). Solà also singles out the Garriguella cooperative, whose dynamic oenologist, Natalia Durán, is working with some microvinifications (look for the Gerisena range) and breaking out of the bland cooperative mould.
Other Catalan regions – Priorat, Montsant, Terra Alta, Costers del Segre etc. – are well represented and there are close on 500 different cavas to choose from. After Catalunya in the popularity stakes comes Rioja, with a range of wines from a basic Cvne at €6 to Roda’s Cirsion at €148, closely followed by Ribera del Duero, with names like Vega Sicilia, Alión and Pesquera in evidence. The bodega-bar and its bulk wines are but a distant memory. S.S.
