Tom Gallagher has just finished making repairs on his vineyard after a torrential rainstorm overnight in the Montsant wine region of southern Catalonia, Spain.
He describes the work at its heart as really “very basic farming”. Despite a lot of “snobbishness” about wine, he says it has many similarities to that of his farmer grandfather milking cows in Co Roscommon.
“The reality of farming wine is early mornings, cold mornings, hard work, and you can’t leave it – the more you give it the more you get back,” he says.
“The difference is today it’s 18 degrees, the sun is hitting my face, I’m breathing in fresh air and nobody is shouting at me.”
RM Block
Gallagher spent his early life living in the countryside near Boyle, Co Roscommon. Here his father grew a vegetable garden, his mother made everything from scratch.
“That philosophy prepares you for a hard day’s work, the appreciation of being outside by myself.”
Aged 10 his parents moved to Sitges, Catalonia for a new life. It was in school there, understanding little that was said to him in Catalan, that Tom came up with the drawing containing his name that is now his Tomish wine brand.
[ Four fine wines with strong Irish connectionsOpens in new window ]
While farming may have been in his DNA, winemaking wasn’t. Gallagher says it has been a steep learning curve since he began rebuilding an abandoned vineyard in Priorat during the Covid lockdown.
Up to this Gallagher’s experience with wine was much less hands on. After he ‘retired early’ from playing rugby at 22, he began a brand, a small part of which was exporting a range of BeTomish wine made by others in this region.
He was working in New York when the pandemic was declared and he had 24 hours to return to Spain. He moved back in with his parents after 15 years away, to the village of Falset where his mother Joan runs Priorat Aparthotel. He expected to be there for a few months “while it all blew over” he says.
As the pandemic dragged-on Gallagher called a family friend who had purchased an 11 acre abandoned vineyard with plans to rebuild. So began the journey of restoring old vines and clearing a forest for some new ones.
“I recovered 1,000 abandoned vines where our first Diga 2021 wine came from,” Gallagher says of the organic Grenache and Cabernet Sauvignon blend.
Gallagher cleared out four hectares in 2022 where he planted 10,000 new vines by hand. This is his first year to be able to harvest these new vines for winemaking.
His father managed the restoration of the house “and I was his helper.. My focus is on the vineyard,” says Gallagher. The plot with a deep well and solar panels is “fully off grid, but in a very comfortable way,” Gallagher says.
This summer Gallagher returned to his hometown of Boyle to launch the second Tomish wine from the vineyard at the town’s arts festival.
His Irish connection remains deep and has been key to his success, he says. Some 80 per cent of his wine sells to Ireland, where he aims at a higher-end market.
“Irish people support Irish who go out and do something different”. With thousands of Spanish brands, being Irish sets him apart and “gets him one step in the door and a little leverage”, he says.
The second wine, called Divine, is a Grenache 2023 vintage from vines which are 50 to 100 years old and aged 12 months in barrel.
Divine features a painting of his next-door-neighbour Ramon on the label by Irish artists Mark Redden.
Not having a background in wine, it’s been an “incredible learning curve” for Gallagher and much of that knowledge came from Ramon. “You’re working in nature, controlling the reality you are living in, controlling disease, humidity, rainfall.”
So why is Ramon on the label? “I wanted to dedicate the bottle to him. He is dying of cancer and had taken care of his plot for 60 years before selling it to us,” says Gallagher
Ramon sold Gallagher two hectares of his vineyard. “He said the only one I’d sell the plot to is you” after seeing me working over the past few years, says Gallagher.
Ramon had previously only sold his grapes to a co-op rather than making his own wine. “As his Grenache was such good quality we decided to launch our premium bottle of Divine with 100 per cent of his grapes, with 999 bottles.”
Gallagher talks about his work an infectious enthusiasm though the amount of hard graft sounds enormous.
“I do it all – everything from pruning to fertilising to sales to marketing and brand building,” he says.
“I will only ever produce 10,000 bottles a year ... the wine has to be high quality” he says.
With the plot now fully planted, Gallagher has expanded to making olive oil (with 500 olive trees), honey and in a nod to the rise in a non-alcohol culture, Tombuxa kombucha (one for morning and one for night time).
One unexpected result for Gallagher has been the “crazy free workout”. Gallagher played rugby at a high level in his youth, including in New Zealand. But thanks to the vineyard work is now “coming into his prime at 34″ but with “hands full of cuts”.
“Every day and every year is different,” he says. His knowledge of what to expect improves every year “down to every month of the year: the rainfall, the sunlight, the diseases, how many times you plough, what you fertilise with,” he says listing it almost breathlessly.
Some locals at first weren’t keen about taking directions from an Irish guy, says Gallagher. “They have all come around, there is an amazing community around here,” he says. He says that speaking Catalan and knowing the culture was a huge help. “Here they respect hard work and dedication”
Find more on Tom Gallagher’s wine TomishWine.com and at Instagram @Tomishwine
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