Spain: Deep Dive Into Gredos

e.g. Burgundy 2000

LUIS GUTIÉRREZ 23rd Apr 2020 | The Wine Advocate (/articles/the-wine-advocate) | April 2020 Week 4 (/articles/the- wine-advocate?issue=jQ3ndK7WSXCKrBuxQ)

I wanted to get a good picture of what is happening in Gredos, one of the hottest places for Garnacha in Spain, a region that has recently become known for ne wine and is still nding its way but has huge potential. This is my fth article talking about the wines from this region, so I have already introduced the zone and growers and explained the particularities of a region of very strong character that, unfortunately, is not a single appellation of origin as it should be. You might be interested in reading my introduction to the region in 2014, Gredos: Mountain Garnacha on Granite (https://www.robertparker.com/articles/QMu84gonsHh3NBbw8/spain-gredos-mountain- garnacha-on-granite), the follow-up articles talking about the issue with the (non) appellation, Gredos: The Appellation That Could Have Been (https://www.robertparker.com/articles/56f2389c7ee1932e7900afd0/) and Gredos: Garnacha Tangled by the Appellations (https://www.robertparker.com/articles/EHsPZZcMS7tGRy4jL/), or Aragón, Gredos and Navarra – The Amazing Garnachas from 2016 (and Some More) (https://www.robertparker.com/articles/LCm3x75gtxX8QJkxC/), where I focused on the wines from 2016 and put Gredos in the context of the other Garnacha regions of Spain.

Gredos? What the Hell is Gredos? You might nd references to Gredos, Sierra de Gredos and Garnachas de Gredos, which was an association of the wineries working in the region that is now obsolete. Gredos is the name of a mountain range in central Spain, mostly in the province of Ávila but with part of its foothills in the provinces of Madrid and Toledo. The highest peak in Sierra de Gredos is the Pico Almanzor, at 2,591 meters in altitude. But of course, in these latitudes, the limit for cultivation of the vine is not that high. The vineyards tend to be in the foothills, where they still get the inuence of the mountains rather than being in the actual mountains (that’s the Parque Regional de la Sierra de Gredos), which means cooler temperatures and more rain than in the warmer and drier zones further away from the mountains. That makes it a little tricky to put limits to the Sierra de Gredos wine region where vineyards are cultivated. One of the main problems is that the zone belongs to three provinces, each in a dierent political region (autonomous community) and, therefore, within three separate appellations of origin!

Cebreros is both the name of a village and the appellation of origin in the southeast of the province of Ávila in the region Castilla y León from Spain, with 35 villages in total. Cebreros was the main wine village in the zone and hence the name chosen to name the appellation. All of the wines from Cebreros are from Gredos. As Gredos is very recent, many of the wines from the zone still carry the more-generic Vino de la Tierra Castilla y León appellation or are sold without any appellation at all, as generic wine from Spain. Méntrida is the name of a village and an appellation of origin in the province of Toledo in the Castilla-La Mancha region of Spain. Only a small fraction of the wines from Méntrida belong to the Sierra de Gredos, basically those from the villages of Almendral de la Cañada, El Real de San Vicente, Navamorcuende and Pelahustán.

Vinos de Madrid is a hold-all appellation for all the wines produced within the province of Madrid, which comprises very dierent and faraway zones—Arganda, El Molar, Navalcarnero and San Martín de Valdeiglesias. These zones have very little in common other than being within the same province, which is a political rather than geographical demarcation. Only part of the wines from the subzone of San Martín de Valdeiglesias within Vinos de Madrid belong to the Sierra de Gredos, those from the villages closer to the mountains. The vineyards are located in the villages of Cadalso de los Vidrios, Cenicientos, Rozas de Puerto Real and San Martín de Valdeiglesias. Sierra de Gredos means Gredos Mountains, so this is a region with mountains and some high- altitude vineyards. There are perhaps between 1,800 and 2,000 hectares of vineyards, but many small plots might not be in the records, so it’s dicult to say. Yes, it’s a small region, but to give some perspective, it is similar in size to Priorat or Jura. Like Jura, Priorat and many other regions, the amount land under vine was a lot larger in the past.

There are two important rivers in the zone, the Alberche and the Tiétar, and therefore, there are two main valleys. But there are lots of small tributaries and smaller valleys that provide for huge diversity and increased complexity as you multiply altitudes with orientations and locations in three main climate zones of dry Mediterranean, wet Mediterranean and continental/mountain climates.

Some circumstances have made Gredos quite unique: The isolation and lack of quality wines has made the size of the region smaller, as many old vineyards have been lost because there was no new blood to take over from the old timers. The price of grapes was ridiculously low, and the orography of the place made it very labor-intensive. So, the vineyards that remained were mostly kept out of love for the place and family traditions—vineyards planted by a grandfather or great- grandfather, a romantic approach to the land rather than a commercial one. And that also meant almost no new vineyards were planted in the last 50 years; there are hardly any French grapes or trellised vines.

If I express it the opposite way, we can say Gredos is a reservoir of around 2,000 hectares of 50+- year-old, head-pruned, dry-farmed vines, mostly red Garnacha and a little white Albillo Real on high- altitude, mostly granite soils. Does it sound like a zone with great potential? It does to me! Old, head-pruned, dry-farmed Garnacha at high altitude on granite soils

The landscape is stunning and quite varied, with some incredible-looking vineyards, nature at its best: unspoiled, wild, rustic, full of energy and light and as authentic as it gets. It’s easy to get carried away when you are there, because there is a sort of magnetic attraction similar to that of Priorat, Ribeira Sacra or the Douro; the landscape is hypnotic, and in many of vineyards, you feel there is a special energy.

Ain’t No Mountain High Enough I think altitude is one of the most, if not the most, important parameter to understand the Gredos vineyards. Altitude varies widely, roughly from 600 to 1,200 meters. Altitude is important for providing freshness in the wines. In the lower-altitude places, you have a milder, more Mediterranean climate with rounder and weightier wines, and as you go up, the wines also get cooler and slimmer and have more minerality and tension. The municipalities might have vineyards at dierent altitudes, as this is a mountain zone, it’s not at. But to give you an idea, I’ll list the altitude of some of the better-known villages:

Burgohondo – 847 meters Cadalso de los Vidrios – 804 meters Cebreros – 755 meters Cenicientos – 775 meters El Real de San Vicente – 751 meters El Tiemblo – 685 meters Hoyo de Pinares – 850 meters Navarrevisca – 1,129 meters Navatalgordo – 1,262 meters Rozas de Puerto Real – 882 meters San Martín de Valdeiglesias – 681 meters Villanueva de Ávila – 1,059 meters

Altitude is probably the most important parameter for vineyards in Gredos

I think we could make a classication of the style of the wines according to the altitude of the vineyards.

Below 800 meters – warmer climate and more generous wines Between 800 and 1,000 meters – I’d say this is where the majority of quality wines from Gredos are, and you have a wide range of styles, from rounder to more austere wines Higher than 1,000 meters – cooler climate as well as more austerity and mountain character in the wines

It’s not as simple as that, as we’ll see, but there is some correlation. The actual location matters, as sometimes nearby mountains can stop clouds or certain places can have more or less rain and a more humid or drier climate within the same altitude. For example, Las Rozas de Puerto Real has a lot more rain, and the landscape is a lot greener than that of Burgohondo even though they are at similar altitudes. There are also a thousand details and nuances that make every vineyard almost unique, so it’s very dicult to make generalizations. Another example is the Iruelas Valley in the municipality of El Tiemblo, which has a very dierent microclimate from the rest of municipality, and the character of the wines from there can dier widely from the rest.

Orientation or exposure might be the next parameter of importance. South-facing is a warmer direction than north-facing. But within these, there might be other things that inuence or limit exposure of the vines to the sun, in the case of very narrow places or whatever accidents that might throw shade on the plants. And then we have composition of soils and age, density of planting and pruning of the vines, together with a lot of other details. And that’s without going into the winery, starting with the date of harvest, following with vinication and then élevage.

Producers are still in the process of making sense of all this and how it aects the style of the dierent wines. And so are we…

Can We Talk About Village Character? It takes a very long time to understand terroir and the typicity of the places, but perhaps in Gredos it’s easier than other places, as there’s basically one red grape, Garnacha, and one white grape, Albillo Real. There is also a handful of producers working hard to understand their soils, to see where they have more silt or more quartz, the level of degradation of the granite or the strike of slate-like soils in Cebreros. It’s also important to understand how compact the soil is or how much air it contains, the presence of life (plants, animals, etc.) and how all of this inuences the wines. The work that Chilean terroir expert Pedro Parra has done with Comando G is great to understand a little bit about what Gredos is, as they are one of the few projects that have vineyards in dierent zones and soils besides working in many dierent villages, even in the three provinces. Their wines, and those sold under the name of Daniel Landi, tend to be quite transparent with the terroir, so they are good examples to understand the typicity of the places.

I think it will take even longer until we agree to something like the general idea most people have about Burgundy, such as powerful and earthy wines from Gevrey, more rusticity in Morey, ne and elegant reds in Chambolle and the perfumed spiciness of Vosne, etc. But I think we can start and rene it with time.

San Martín de Valdeiglesias is perhaps the village that has a more dened character, and having had Bernabeleva and Marañones, two of the pioneers there, has obviously helped. The reds tend to have more tannin, sometimes in need of a little more time in bottle. Those tannins coupled with the grainy texture provided by granite often make me think of an Italian wine—more Nebbiolo than Pinot Noir, more Barolo than Burgundy. The white granite soils tend to give the wines a tasty, almost salty touch. Together with Cebreros, this is the zone with the most Albillo Real, as the white grape needs warmer places to ripen properly. Other good examples come from 4 Monos, and since 2017, Ca’ di Mat.

Typical Albillo Real vineyard in San Martín de Valdeiglesias El Real de San Vicente is the main village in the province of Toledo and in the appellation Méntrida. Although it only has a few hectares of vineyards, there are some relevant producers, such as Canopy, Daniel Landi and Jiménez-Landi (whose wines I couldn’t taste, given the logistical diculties generated by the Coronavirus crisis lockdown) who make wines from the village. So, it’s possible to extrapolate a character from them, as it’s quite distinctive: the mouthfeel is quite chalky, with the dry sensation often provided by limestone soils even though the soils here are pure granite, coupled by citrus freshness. Chalk and citrus.

Classical vineyard landscape at El Real de San Vicente

Cadalso de los Vidrios is one of the main vineyard villages, and there are a number of examples of wines from there: 4 Monos, Comando G, Miguel Santiago, the cooperative… Here, the wines are eshy and juicy with good balance and some grainy minerality. The vineyards from Cadalso de los Vidrios deliver eshy Garnacha wines.

Cebreros is another one of the big centers of production; there might be around 300 hectares of vineyards in the village, and increasingly more quality producers are making wine there. Telmo Rodríguez was the absolute pioneer in Gredos and also the rst to point out the singularity of the slate soils in Cebreros, a vein that licks other villages, but it’s almost exclusively located there. Slate soils from Cebreros

Now there are two faces to Cebreros, the slate soils and the granite soils. Other producers include Dani Landi, Viñedos del Jorco and, more recently, the local cooperative and Soto y Manrique. The wines can be intensely Mediterranean, powerful but fragrant, with elegant minerality, especially in the slate soils. It’s also an important hub for Albillo, and producers like Orly Lumbreras and Rubén Díaz have experimented with skin contact and other techniques. It’s also the place with a strong tradition for rancio wines. Vineyard landscape from Cebreros

Navatalgordo is one of the highest villages, at 1,262 meters in altitude, but its vineyards have a very dierent character if we think about the ones almost touching the limits of Burgohondo, where it can get quite warm and the wines can be rounder and more generous. But in the higher-altitude plots in the north, like the paraje known as El Tamboril where Comado G works, or the El Cerro del Brujo from the new project Alto Horizonte, at 1,120 meters in altitude, these more extreme vineyards deliver wines that have great tension and are narrow with cold, austere minerality. High-altitude mountain vineyards in Navatalgordo

Another high-altitude village is Villanueva de Ávila. It is perhaps not yet that well known, because it still needs more quality producers (I reckon there should be at least two or three quality producers in each village to be able to start talking about the character of the wines from the village). It’s also a very small place, with just 229 inhabitants in the 2019 census, and quite recent too, since it gained independence from Navatalgordo as recently as 1991. But if you consider that the wines Tumba del Rey Moro and Rumbo al Norte from Comando G, consistently at the top of the quality hierarchy of the whole region, come from vineyards in this village, I think we can safely say there is potential for spicy, perfumed, austere and mineral wines from one of the places with more silt in the composition of the soils. And it’s also the home of my favorite restaurant in the Sierra de Gredos wine region! Stunning vineyard in Villanueva de Ávila on sandy granite soils rich in silt

This is only my rst idea. If you don’t like it, I have others.

In Praise of 2018 The majority of the wines I tasted for this article—more than ever before—were from the 2017 and 2018 vintages, with just a handful from 2019 and some late releases from 2016 to 2010. 2017 and 2018 are very dierent vintages, so let’s take a look at some details.

2017 is a very irregular year. It was marked by spring frost and hail, twice in some places and sometimes as late as the last week of August—a mere few days before harvesting the Garnacha and after most had picked the white Albillo. Hence, just as I saw with the 2016 whites from Burgundy, there is a huge dierence between the vineyards that were hit and those that weren’t. Some vineyards suered from frost and were hit by hail twice, others escaped clean, and all the combinations in between were also possible. I visited the highest-altitude vineyard in Cebreros on September 18th, a vineyard that now produces one of the new single-vineyard bottlings from Soto y Manrique, and not only did the vines not have any grapes but none of the vines had a single leaf either! It was like someone had meticulously pulled every single leaf and bunch from all the branches. I’ve never seen anything like it. It had been hit by hail, twice. A vineyard hit by hail on 28th August 2017 (photo courtesy of Comando G)

Many wines could not be produced in 2017: yields were low, and the end of the season was also warm and dry, so ripening of a small crop was very quick, and the harvest was earlier than ever. The result is very heterogeneous, but in general, they will be wines for earlier drinking. Some already show orange colors, very developed noses and feel older than they really are. But the wines are not as ripe and concentrated as those from 2015; the wines have more light and freshness. I’m planning on drinking most of them before I drink the 2016s and, of course, way before I touch the 2018s. Comando G’s Rumbo al Norte vineyard on a snowy day in January 2020

I absolutely must mention the 2017 wine of the vintage, as the 2017 Rumbo al Norte from Comando G really transcends the year and is also the most exceptional wine of the 200+ wines I tasted for this article, including many 2018s. This high-altitude vineyard escaped all the problems of the year—hail and frost—and its location (north-facing, high altitude) and soil (sandy granite with lots of silt) make it resistant to heat and drought. It clearly delivered the nest wine of the vintage, as usual!

The following vintage and harvest were almost the opposite, because 2018 could very well be the nest overall vintage in the short recent history of Gredos: healthy, heterogeneous and complete, with a good crop. The whole cycle was just textbook perfect: weather, rain, everything at the right time in the right quantities. The conditions were perfect for a slow and optimum ripening of the grapes. The crop was healthy, and everything was easy. The wines are like a much more complete version of the 2016s, with more power and balance. They are serious and also more backward, and I think they are going to develop magnicently in bottle. Even the more approachable cuvées are going to benet from at least one more year in bottle, and the top wines should make old bones.

The vintage is so atypical that even the whites show a dierent behavior from normal. Like the main white grape from the region, Albillo Real, which ripens so early, whites from warm years generally show more freshness than those from cooler years. In cool years, whites can be wider, rounder and more generous, because the slow ripening means less of the already-scarce acidity from the grape remains by the time they are picked. This is the opposite of what you expect, as you normally have more freshness in the wines from cooler years. Well, the whites from 2018, denitely a cooler and wetter year, show incredible freshness and seem to break the paradigm. I think most people also have a better understanding of the grape, as they learned a lot in the cooler 2013 vintage. And even if 2018 was a cooler year, many harvested the grapes early to avoid the drop in acidity and, at the same time, achieved lower alcohol without the wines being green. Some reds from 2018 have not yet been bottled, as the development in cask has been quite slow, requiring a longer élevage; so, some of the top reds will be reviewed in my next round, as they’ll take some time to hit the shelves.

Furthermore, the wines from 2018 show the character of each place and the variety quite transparently: the Albillos with that characteristic bitter touch on the nish, the Garnachas quite oral and the wines from San Martín have even more marked salinity. The terroir comes through more transparently in the wines when the grapes have not been picked too early or too late, are not over-extracted or under-extracted, of course, and when the wines have been aged respectfully without invasive aromas and avors.

It might still be too early to talk about 2019, but it’s clearly a warmer year and not as heterogeneous and “easy” as 2018. It was more challenging, and rains toward the end of the harvest complicated things in some of the higher-altitude and later-ripening vineyards, where sorting and discarding grapes might have been necessary in places where in 2018 the grapes were simply perfect.

Exciting New Names There are still few projects in the region; some are very small scale and local, and more are needed. But this time I tasted wines from 34 of them, more than ever, and I also discovered more new ones than ever before. There are 10 wineries that appear here for the rst time, most of them completely new, producing their rst wines in 2017 or 2018. Their names are 10 Delirios, A Pie de Tierra, Alto Horizonte, Rico Nuevo, Ca’ di Mat, Nietos de Señora María, Parajes de los Vidrios, Península Vinicultores, ValleYglesias and Vettones. A Pie de Tierra is a very young project (2017) on the outskirts of Gredos, as they have vines in Méntrida (Toledo) and Aldea del Fresno (Madrid), none really in Gredos proper. But they work with Garnacha on granite soils in a style inspired by the Gredos wines. It's the personal project of Aitor Paúl, who is a sommelier in the Lavinia wine shop in Madrid, and David Villamiel, who has family roots and vineyards in Méntrida (Toledo). They decided to make good use of Villamiel's 20 hectares of family vineyards after they met at university. They also rent additional vineyards in Aldea del Fresno, the adjacent village already in the province of Madrid. The wines have a more Mediterranean character than those from Gredos, given the temperatures (higher) and rain (lower) in their zone. They work organically and have started with biodynamics; their wines ferment with indigenous yeasts with full clusters, and they practice long macerations and aging in large/neutral wood containers. They are somewhat inspired by Comando G, where Villamiel staged after nishing his studies. They produce 10,000 bottles per vintage.

Similar to Viñedos del Jorco (La Tintorería and Raúl Pérez), introduced in my previous article, Paraje de los Vidrios is another joint venture between people who sell wine and those who make it. This project brings together Madrid wine distributor ASEUNIV, Cadalso de los Vidrios grape grower Miguel Santiago and La Mancha winemaker Manuel Manzaneque Suárez.

Alto Horizonte is a 6,000-bottle project started in 2015 by four friends, Aurelio García and Micaela Rubio and Jose Ángel Colomo and Marisa Galán, to produce wines from the Sierra de Gredos. They work mainly in the province of Ávila but don't yet have a winery in the zone, and they produce and age the wines in a winery in the village of La Alberca de Záncar (province of Cuenca), where García and Rubio have another family project to produce Bobal wines from Cuenca. This is the reason why the wines are sold without appellation of origin, even though the vineyards are within the boundaries of Cebreros. They have rented 5.5 hectares of 75+-year-old vines, mostly in the village of Navatalgordo, and some in Villanueva de Ávila; their ambition is to eventually build a small winery there, as they expect the business to grow, with a projection to produce 13,000 bottles from 2019. Aurelio García's day job is as winemaker at Valquejigoso, a winery in Madrid bordering Toledo.

A mere few days before the total Coronavirus lockdown, I made my last trip to vineyards in Gredos to see the work of Rubén Díaz. If there is a true local and one who helped most people when they arrived in the region, well that’s him.

Rubén Díaz, one of the few true locals from Cebreros

Díaz originally had a joint venture with Orlando “Orly” Lumbreras, but they nally decided to go their separate ways. They now each produce their own wines, but together they produced one of my favorite “orange” wines, Sade. It’s a skin-contact Albillo Real, as Cebreros is one of the best villages for the grape, and Díaz controls some of the best plots of the variety. Don’t miss the spectacular 2016 Sade.

We visited some of these Albillo vineyards, a variety that tends to grow into very thick vines, bulky, round bushes. He also took me to see a very nice vineyard in the village of San Bartolomé de Pinares, a village I had never visited before, as well as some of his slate plots in the Galayo zone of Cebreros. As a true local, he’s keeping the tradition of producing rancio wines. These are soleras of oxidative wines matured in barrel for a long time in the style of an Oloroso sherry but with local grapes, mostly reds, but also some whites of unusual nesse. Impressive old vines of Albillo Real on sandy soil in Cebreros

And Three Go Straight to the Premier League! Of the new names, the most exciting ones might be Ca’ di Mat and Rico Nuevo as well as Soto y Manrique—a project that is not exactly new but might as well be, as the range of wines is completely dierent from what they were doing before. They make up the trio that I’d like to highlight now.

Ca' di Mat (madhouse in the Italian dialect from Piedmont) has to be one of the most exciting new names in Gredos in recent years. It was started in 2017 Curro Bareño and Jesús Olivares—members of Fedellos do Couto (Ribeira Sacra) and Peixes (Galicia)—and now also includes two new partners, husband and wife Paolo Armando and Victoria Serrano, who is from the region. Many of the names of the wines and even the name of the project are in the Piedmontese dialect, because Armando is from Piedmont. The image of the wines is also linked to the Italian “gallo.” Half of Ca’ di Mat (left to right): Jesús Olivares and Curro Bareño, who are also from Fedellos do Couto in Ribeira Sacra

Serrano owns some family vineyards, and they have rented some additional plots and are also in the process of recovering others that were close to being abandoned. They have 20 hectares of vineyards in San Martín de Valdeiglesias that are planted with Garnacha, Albillo Real and Moscatel, mostly 60- to 80-year-old vines save for a couple of hectares they recently planted. It's all organic farming and natural yeasts, trying to produce terroir-driven wines. It's a truly exciting new name to follow in Gredos. They produce around 20,000 bottles per vintage I tasted the wines from 2017 and 2018, and the dierence in weather conditions is pretty obvious. It was also quite easy to see how they are learning about the dierent vineyards that they work and how mistakes from one year are quickly avoided the next year. The experience and style of the wines from Fedellos do Couto shines through; the wines have nesse and character and clearly point to a project that is very much worth following. A visit to their vineyards is at the top of my to- do list for the next time I cover the region. Ca’ di Mat’s Andrinal vineyard in San Martín de Valdeiglesias (photo courtesy of Ca’ di Mat)

There is a lot to say about Rico Nuevo, a winery that was created as recently as 2018. It's the wine project of the Martín family from the village of Burgohondo (Ávila), who also owns the Manacor pastry shops in Madrid, formerly known as Calamillor. Juan Antonio Martín is an entrepreneur who turned the family pastry business into one of the most respected in Madrid. His son “Juanan” Martín trained as a chef, joined the family business and got bitten by the wine bug. Or even better, by the vineyard bug! Rico Nuevo was the nickname his grandfather had in the village.

They have 12 hectares of vineyards, many planted by his grandfather and inherited from him. The vineyards are spread over 30 plots that range from 60 to 120 years of age and are mostly in their village, but with some also in the neighboring Navatalgordo. For a long time, the vineyards were half neglected and almost forgotten, as it was almost impossible to make them protable. But the rise of Gredos as a quality wine region changed things, and they saw the opportunity to build a sustainable project that was very much linked to their roots. Overview of the vineyards next to the village in Burgohondo

Nobody in the family had formal wine training or experience, so they soon decided they needed external help. Julio Prieto is a vineyard consultant who works in dierent regions, including Aragón, where the main grape is Garnacha. They contacted him and invited him to see the vineyards, and he was immediately hooked! They oered him not only the winemaking gig but also a share in the company.

They had the plan to build a winery in one of their vineyards, but Prieto soon convinced them to focus on the vineyards and leave the construction of the winery for later. So, they got an old barn next to the family house in the village and turned it into a simple winery. This is how they produced their rst wines in 2018. They started with 25,000 bottles.

Their pastry workshop and most of their shops are very near the area of Madrid where I live, so I’ve been a customer for years. When I learned about the project they were working on in Burgohondo, I got really excited, as one of my best friends has family roots in the village. Rolling pastry at the Manacor workshop

They have six shops in the northwest of Madrid, and all of their produce is hand-made at their workshop in Villaviciosa de Odón, which is on the way from my home to Sierra de Gredos. So, I decided to meet them there early in the morning, visit the workshop where they produce everything they sell in the shops and then travel together to see the vineyards.

I visited their vineyards one week before they bottled their rst vintage, and I tasted the wines there and then retasted them once they were bottled a couple of weeks later. They have vineyards at dierent locations, altitudes and orientations, with beautiful old vines on slopes and in impossible places of great natural beauty, which is a constant in Gredos, one of the most striking mountain vineyard places in Spain. This diversity makes it possible for grapes to produce a dierent style of Garnacha. The aim is to show the diversity and character of the places, with a clear quality and terroir approach, starting with organic work in the vineyards. They already have a full range of ve wines, from village to single vineyard, and more to come. The Rico Nuevo team (left to right): Julio Prieto, Juanan Martín and Juan Antonio Martín

Through Julio Prieto, there is a connection with Viña Zorzal in Navarra, and they also have a connection with Matías Michelini from Argentina. They both visited the vineyards with Prieto, and they fell in love with Gredos! So, in 2019 there will be some new wines from Zorzal and Michelini from Gredos!

Soto y Manrique Reinvented I already mentioned Jesús Soto (known by the nickname “Chuchi,” a name often used for people called Jesús) the last time, as he had just arrived in the region. I can now say that he has reinvented the Cebreros cooperative in a remarkable way and has contributed to the creation of the Cebreros appellation of origin. In the cooperative, he has taken over the management, production and sales of the wines, so the growers have nothing to worry about other than producing the best grapes.

They have cleaned the wines, replacing all the rusty machinery, tidying up the facilities and resumed producing and bottling their historical brand, El Galayo. They have gone back to the original label, as the intention was also to go back to the style of the wines from yesteryear. Sales are growing, and they have increased the wine sold in bottle (it was mostly bulk latterly); therefore, the average sale price for their wine has increased, people are getting paid a lot more for their grapes, there is an incentive to keep working the vineyards, and people seem to be proud of their vineyards, village and wine again. The new “old” red and rosé El Galayo from the Cebreros cooperative

It’s crazy how in many regions the best vineyards are in the hands of the local cooperatives, and its potential is rarely exploited. For me, Cebreros is already the benchmark of how to turn around a cooperative, how to protect the old vineyards and how to encourage the growers to keep working them, going back to organics, moving away from herbicides and, ultimately, producing the best grapes possible.

His family project, Soto y Manrique has seen such a transformation and is delivering wines of such quality that it’s well worth taking some time to explain it in detail. He is from Valladolid, where he used to have a wine shop and distribution business that grew too fast until it went bust. After years of working in sales for his friend Didier Belondrade, he started producing his own Verdejo from Rueda and a pale rosé, Naranjas Azules, produced with Garnacha. Naranjas Azules was soon a commercial success, but there’s not a lot of Garnacha in Rueda. That’s how he arrived in Cebreros, looking for Garnacha within Castilla y León for his rosé. He saw the potential of the vineyards there and came up with the idea to take over the cooperative and at the same time increase the production of his rosé.

Soto y Manrique has now turned into a full-edged Gredos project, with all the grapes for the rosé coming from Cebreros and some white still produced with grapes from Rueda to keep existing customers. As they fell more and more in love with the landscape, the vineyards, the potential of the wines and the zone in general, they started producing a village red called La Viña de Ayer in 2016 with grapes purchased from the cooperative. They soon found themselves purchasing vineyards, often from people that were retiring and had nobody to take over from them, turning the vineyards to organic farming, vinifying everything separately to understand the character and potential of each place and slowly dening a whole new range of wines.

The plot called Gargantilla used for the La Mira bottling from the paraje El Galayo on slate soils in Cebreros from Soto y Manrique (photo courtesy Soto y Manrique, © Estanis Nuñez)

In 2017, they produced two paraje (lieu-dit) reds, La Cruz Verde and Las Violetas, and in 2018, the range grew again with a village white, La Viña de Ayer Albillo Real, a paraje bottling from the slate zone of El Galayo called La Mira, and two single-vineyard bottlings, Alto de la Estrella and Las Loberas. Obviously, all of these wines carry the Cebreros appellation. They now have 20 hectares of their own vineyards from which they produce all the paraje and single-vineyard wines, all of them organically farmed. The quality is remarkably high for a rst or second vintage of these wines, and prices are very attractive, especially for the quality they deliver.

Cebreros Update I already reported in my previous article (https://www.robertparker.com/articles/LCm3x75gtxX8QJkxC/) about how the new Cebreros appellation was created in early 2018 and included the vineyards in Gredos within the province of Ávila. Thankfully, my hopes about the revamped cooperative of the village being the motor of the appellation have been fullled and, I must say, greatly exceeded. Working in the vineyards of El Reventón in Cebreros

The situation is quite unusual, because the volume leader is taking a quality-driven approach, and that is what they are also injecting into the appellation’s rules and philosophy. The good news is that Gredos is learning from the experience of Priorat and especially Bierzo, as Bierzo is also in the Castilla y León autonomous community and therefore under the same regional government, where existing regulations might be easier to implement. They are promoting the use of geographical names, starting with the mention of Sierra de Gredos, followed by those of the names of the villages, the zones, lieux-dits or quarters, parajes in Spanish, and even the single vineyards, but without attempting to classify quality, as there is no track record and no history for quality in the region.

Jesús “Chuchi” Soto is one of the main drivers of all this, with the help of the Itacyl, the Instituto Tecnológico Agrario de Castilla y León, the governing body for agriculture and farming in the region and, more specically, with the help of Fernando Lázaro Arranz, who responsible for promotion and quality there. Lázaro has a high sensitivity to wine quality, as for years he was a food and wine journalist for newspaper El Mundo in the Valladolid region. These people understand ne wine throughout the world and, of course, know what is happening in Bierzo, Priorat and the other wine regions in Spain but also in Burgundy, Bordeaux, Champagne, Barolo, Mosel and other ne wine regions in Europe. They have a clear idea of the change needed in Castilla y León. So, in short, Cebreros—which I must confess was seen as a potentially new problem, having one more appellation in the zone—is clearly doing its homework and taking the lead, providing the framework to communicate and sell the origin of their wines, which is what can bring them a competitive advantage. And in doing so, they are paving the way for the other appellations within the Sierra de Gredos, part of Vinos de Madrid and part of Méntrida, to adopt similar policies and even share common names, starting with that of the Sierra de Gredos.

They are still in the process of nalizing their set of regulations, and I hope they will show them when they are done and oer to share them with the other two appellations in Gredos. And in my dream, Cebreros would be the one promoting the common use of Sierra de Gredos for all the wines from the region, which can then be broken down into three appellations, Cebreros, Méntrida and Vinos de Madrid, each with its names of villages, parajes and single vineyards that can be used on labels and shared by the many growers that make and bottle wines from them. I hope I will be able to tell you how this is happening over the next few years. I am a lot more positive about it all now.

La Querencia: An Oasis for the Sierra de Gredos Wine Region Let me just give you one last gastronomy hint if you ever visit the region. La Querencia is the name of the restaurant that young chef Guzmán Sánchez de la Parra opened in his village, Villanueva de Ávila. Guzmán, still in his 20s, studied in Ávila, staged in dierent restaurants and then worked at El Almacén, my fetish restaurant in Ávila, my birthplace. He has now fullled his dream of having his own place in his hometown. It’s one of those places where you’ll nd a nice team of locals watching the telly and sipping their wine in the bar, and in the dining rooms you’ll see mostly tourists enjoying the cuisine with strong regional roots without foregoing prime gastronomy touches and ingredients and the top wines from Gredos.

One of the most celebrated regional dishes from Ávila is patatas revolconas. It’s a very simple, humble, hearty country dish that also works well as a tapa, and it’s extremely popular in the local bars of the province as well as in Salamanca and Extremadura. It’s mashed potatoes with paprika, topped by crunchy fried pork scratchings (torreznos). As simple as that. But many of life’s greatest pleasures are very simple! Patatas revolconas, Ávila’s DNA

And not only does he cook some of the best patatas revolconas I know, he also has some vineyards and a small functional winery in the village and is already producing some wine that is mostly sold at the restaurant but which I think soon will be added to the list of new projects I’ll be tasting from Sierra de Gredos… (https://www.facebook.com/dialog/feed?app_id=1523507334639053&link=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.robertparker.c

(https://twitter.com/intent/tweet?url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.robertparker.com%2Farticles%2FJHZxsWeDjP3KTQ

Vintage Wines RP

2017 Comando G Rumbo Al Norte 99

2017 Comando G Tumba del Rey Moro 97

2018 Bernabeleva Garnacha de Viña Bonita 96+

2016 Telmo Rodríguez Pegaso Granito 96

2017 Comando G El Tamboril 96

View All Wines (/search/wines?assignment=mc7D78CoGXry5ESg2) More articles from this author

Spain: Aragón and Navarra – Garnacha Renaissance

From The Wine Advocate 30th Apr 2020

As COVID-19 truncated all my travel plans for Aragón and Navarra, I tasted these wines at home, sometimes using videoconferences with producers.

(/articles/rJ96pLZexgANRWwGN) Chile: 2018 – The Best Vintage of the Last 20 Years?

From The Wine Advocate 28th Feb 2020

It’s very unusual for the central focus of my article to be a vintage, but the natural conditions of the year provide such a perfect scenario for producing great wines that I truly believe 2018 is the main news about Chile’s wine production right now.

(/articles/nqYKD5w4kqeKieYdg)

The Wine Advocate Comments Section

Please observe the following:

Comments should be relevant to this article/reviewer. Any questions or concerns unrelated to this article or reviewer should be submitted via the Support button in the bottom right corner of this page. Please be kind and respectful.