Vineyard
The vineyard that gives rise to this wine is made up of old vines, which are grown in the traditional way, without chemical additives or stimulants, with only natural splendor and the farmer’s loving hand as key ingredients.
We cultivate looking for balance, so we are governed by respecting the most favorable cycles of nature for each operation, as our ancestors had done for centuries. It’s about working in “mutually favorable collaboration” as they said, and they were right.
The grapes are harvested when they are at their delicious peek, when they have reached their full maturation, and we are certain that Mother Nature has done her best care. So that day by day, the grapes are tasted to gauge the time of the optimum harvest moment, plot by plot. They are collected by hand, with a rigorous field selection, following our highest principle during the harvest: “what you’re not willing to eat, you’re neither willing to drink”. So we choose only the finest fruits for what we are looking for.
The area and its climate
Our vineyards are located in the Mediterranean mountains, in the interior of Valencia, right on the Cabriel River Plateau. A very special corner that benefits from uniquely favorable conditions for the cultivation of vine, an unknown treasure.
The key to this plateau is its peculiar climate in summer, conditioned by its altitude (750-1000 m) and its proximity to the Mediterranean Sea, which generates a complex combination of incredible marine and mountain climate. Summer days are warm and dry but the nights are typicaly Mediterranean, fresh and wet, which challenges and encourages the plant every day, something that every winemaker dreams of happening in their vineyard. This allows for a thermal difference between day and night of more than 20 degrees, a gift for obtaining high quality wines. This is a luxury that cannot be manufactured, either you have it or you don’t.
Varieties
Well documented remains of winemaking in the region are of Iberian origin, of great wealth, from the fifth century (B. C).
The Cabriel plateau maintains a treasure that very few areas have managed to conserve. We are fortunate to be able to enjoy native varieties that are only grown here and that have been preserved throughout the centuries as a legacy of our ancestors giving wines a unique personality, from the star variety in our Bobal reds, to our Tardana whites and reaching the now extinct Royal grape. This is a variety with which we are one of the few families that still make wine, since it has practically disappeared.
Proof of this is the archaeological site of the Pilillas, in the Requena’s district of Los Duques. Dating from the Iberian era, approximately the fifth century (B. C.) there is evidence of wine production in the municipality of Requena.
Bobal
The Bobal grape variety is the most widespread in the area, the Utiel-Requena Designation of Origin. This native grape occupies 75% of the total area of the vineyard, and adapts perfectly to its climate and territory.
La presencia de la bobal en la zona, no es reciente, hay constancia de su existencia desde le siglo IX, siendo también una de las variedades citadas en el siglo XV, por Jaume Roig en su libro “L’Espill ó Llibre de les dones”.
“la pus sana de muntalbana, Boval, o Negrella si volent plantar i corear pus fructos i virtuos”