Lleida
Lleida · Catalonia
DO CataluñaDO CavaDO Costers del Segre146.266inhabitants
49 BCfirst mention
1168wine documented
Capital of the province, beside the river Segre. It was Iltirta, the chief city of the Iberian Ilergetes from the 6th century BC, then Roman Ilerda (a municipium under Augustus) and Andalusi Larida. Raimat, a winegrowing settlement, belongs to its municipal territory.
First mention: Julius Caesar, in De bello civili (I, 38), relates that in 49 BC the Pompeian legates Afranius and Petreius decided to make war “ad Ilerdam”. Iberian coins bearing the legend iltiŕta may be earlier, but they could not be dated with a source.
The legend
place name documented 1168; legend of the coat of arms (castle rebuilt 1715-18); bodega 1914Raimat: the grape cluster and the hand of the castle
Above the gate of Raimat castle, within the municipality of Lleida, there is a stone coat of arms with a bunch of grapes and a hand. Local people read it as a rebus: raïm (grape) and mà (hand), Raimat. The Raventós family, who bought the estate in 1914, adopted it as the emblem of their bodega, though they turned the hand upwards. Philology tells a similar story by another route: Joan Coromines explains the name, documented as Raesmat (1168) and Raxmad (1172), as a Mozarabic derivative of the Latin racemus, ‘bunch of grapes’, that is, ‘land of vines’, predating even Muslim rule. So popular myth and scholarly etymology agree that this place is named after the grape.
Alive today: Lleida is home to the Regulatory Council of the DO Costers del Segre, and Raimat is one of its subzones. The Raimat bodega, part of the Raventós Codorníu group, still makes wine on the estate bought in 1914, in its building by Joan Rubió i Bellver (1918), one of the first in reinforced concrete in Spain, which can be visited on the Lleida Wine Route.
Wineries and their wines
- Raimat Abadia Tinto Ecológico
- Raimat Albariño Saira Ecológico
- Raimat Chardonnay Ecológico
- Raimat Clamor Tinto Eco
- Raimat El Molí Cabernet Sauvignon-Syrah Eco
- Raimat El Niu
- Vol d'Ànima de Raimat Blanco Ecológico
- Vol d'Ànima de Raimat Rosé Ecológico
Wine towns nearby