It’s hard to account for the evolution, except to say that all over the world the Goliath wines of 20 years ago have moved toward becoming Davids, fleet and agile rather than hulking giants. It would be easy to conclude that this is simply another stylistic oscillation, and that more will come.

I don’t think so, though. It seems to me that wines have returned to classical conceptions of what they ought to be, after a period of strange extravagance in which wine was amplified because, for the first time, producers had the wherewithal to do it. Maybe that’s out of our system, and once again, wine is something that can be served at the table.

This is not to say that the wines of today are anything like they were 50 or 75 years ago. Too many other variables, including science, technology, education and climate, prevent that from ever happening.

Nor will we ever think of wine in the same way that people thought of it a century ago, when, with a few exceptions, wine was mostly a local industry. Now, it’s global, prized around the world rather than a few isolated outposts. Aesthetic and health standards are different. People are more educated about wine, and have far more choices.

Today, diversity reigns. If consumers want powerful, dense, oaky wines, they can still find them, although as far as we could tell from our tasting, not so much in Priorat. Our favorites were floral, with stony mineral flavors and fruit that was juicy and appetizing rather than syrupy.

“These were concentrated without being clunky or cloying,” A.J. said.

The bad bottles? We found only a few, and they tended to be overly rustic or marred in some other way rather than exaggerated or oaky.

We did see two main types in our tasting, those with the structure to benefit and evolve from aging, and those that seemed delicious right now. Our favorite, the 2016 Clos Mogador, was from the family of René Barbier, one of the pioneers of Priorat’s resurrection. It was ripe, lively and fresh, with floral and mineral flavors. It was also the most expensive bottle in our tasting at $99, near our $100 spending limit.