Why it matters
The producer
Bell Cros sits in DO Montsant, the Catalan appellation that wraps around Priorat in the hills of Tarragona province. The name translates from old Catalan as beautiful valley: bell for beautiful, cros an archaic local word for valley that no longer appears in everyday speech. Ann and Peter Skoglund, who had built and sold a business in Sweden, discovered Montsant wines on visits to Barcelona and decided, with unusual speed, to become the people who made them. On September 13, 2017, they bought a 6-hectare parcel of Carinyena vines from two local farmers, Joan and Maria, and sealed the transaction in the traditional Catalan way, with a handshake. They named their first wine after it.
The estate has grown from that original 6 hectares to 25, all farmed organically. The winery facility was completed in 2022. The two wines available in the verified source range are El Tracte, a Carinyena red made from the founding parcel, and La Figaflor, a Garnacha Blanca white that was named best Garnacha Blanca in La Guía de Vins de Catalunya 2024.
Place and vineyards
Where the wines begin
Montsant is a DO carved out of the province of Tarragona in southern Catalonia. It forms a rough ring around Priorat, sharing similar granite and slate subsoils, including the dark fragmented llicorella slate that characterises the wider zone, but producing wines at a different price level. The appellation covers a varied landscape of hills and valleys in the Serra de Montsant mountains, with vineyards planted at altitude on poor, mineral-rich soils that force vines to work for water and produce concentrated rather than generous fruit.
The name Bell Cros, beautiful valley, is a description of where the estate stands, and the physical address matters to the wine. Low-yielding organic vines on thin Montsant soils give Carinyena its deep pigment, its dense black-fruit aromatics, and the structural grip that allows long ageing. Garnacha Blanca from the same terroir produces whites with the weight and aromatic complexity that earned La Figaflor its 2024 guide recognition.
In the cellar
Vineyards and cellar
The estate farms 25 hectares under certified organic management. The founding Carinyena vines sit on the original 6-hectare parcel acquired in September 2017, and it is from those vines that El Tracte is made. Carinyena, the grape known in French as Carignan, is the dominant red variety across the estate. Garnacha Blanca covers the white wine ground.
Organic farming on Montsant's thin, fast-draining soils tends to produce low yields with marked fruit concentration. The decision to certify organically from the outset rather than transitioning from conventional viticulture reflects a founding commitment rather than a later conversion. The 2022 winery gave the estate its own facility for the first time, allowing tighter control over harvest timing, sorting, and the ageing trajectory that El Tracte's documented aging potential to 2045 requires. Detailed cellar process information, including maceration periods, oak regime, and fermentation temperatures, is not available in current sources.
Wines to know
The range in view
The two confirmed wines in the Bell Cros range are El Tracte and La Figaflor.
El Tracte is a red wine made entirely from Carinyena grown on the original 2017 parcel. The color is deep and opaque, with a pronounced blue-black cast rather than the red-violet more typical of lighter red wines. The aromatic profile is dense: black plum, blueberry, fresh black fruits, mint, licorice, and a background thread of violets. The wine carries serious ageing architecture, with the estate citing potential to 2045 under proper storage conditions. El Tracte is a structured wine that works with food, particularly meat, and carries all the concentration associated with old Carinyena vines on mineral Montsant soils.