Vides Singulares, Com Pasion Garnacha, DOP Cebreros, Spain, 2019

Producer Profile

Vides Singulares was born out of a search for purpose, to enjoy what matters, to re-connect with nature and maybe even make a difference...

however in the process Raul and Maite have also managed to make some truly exceptional wines. Seeking out and rescuing indigenous varieties and vineyards abandoned due to rural depopulation; they are also managing to reinvigorate the social environment in which the vineyards are located, though a wine tourism project, bringing their concept full circle. Their labour of love started with just 2.7 hectares of old bush vine vineyard, located across several plots in Ávila, planted with predominantly pre-phylloxera Grenache, Albillo and Verdejo. The meticulous process of recovering the vines from the encroaching forest, decades of poor pruning and disease was costly in terms of both money and time, yet gradually vines were revived, the soils carefully ploughed and these precious old vines have once again been brought back into production. Their discovery continued with recovering 2 hectares of vineyards in the Sierra de Gredos, with a focus on low yielding, old bush vine Garnacha and Albillo Real in the old winery of Cebreros; here in the Alberche Valley, the poor soil marked with decomposed granite and slate produces highly expressive and singular expressions of the varieties. Their search took them to a third region, the spectacular Ribeira Sacra in the Val Do Miño where their main purpose built winery is located along with a further 4 hectares of vines. Here are in their other vineyards, nature’s cycle and biodynamics govern their daily work and now the vineyards are beginning to more than repay the attention they’ve received, with increased vigour across all varieties (Godello, Albariño, Loureira and Mencia) and incredibly fruit expression transmitted through the granite shale terroir.

Viticulture

Grapes from several selected plots of land within Cebreros, grown on 70 year+ old bush vines that are all tended by hand without fertiliser or herbicides.Soils are mostly granite and silt-sandy texture.

Winemaking

A manual harvest and then 70% of the harvest is destemmed before pressing. Fermented with autochthonous yeasts in 8,000 litre cement tanks. Fermentation lasts from 15 to 20 days then aged in 55 hl Fench oak barrels.

Oak Ageing

Time: 8 Months
Type: 55hl French Oak
% wine oaked: 100
% new oak: None

Tasting Note

Another fine example of a well made, pure Garnacha wine. Cherry red in colour. On the nose we find wild rose, wild red fruits and fennel followed by fresh summer red fruits of raspberry and red currant, supple tannins and a well roundedl finish.

Food Matching

Cheese, pasta, salted fish and stewed poultry

Awards

Jancis Robinson 17.5 Points
Such limpid, ripe, rose-petal-velvet raspberry fruit! Like sunrise shafting through a ruby stained-glass window, spilling across a dusty flagstone floor; spilling blood red and gemstone-lucid liquid light; spilling dust motes and cinnamon and dried cranberries and crimson; spilling out the glass and lazily, quietly, softly sifting back to earth and settling into a forest floor of autumn leaves and tannins savoury, softly gritty, gilled and silky wet as underwood mushrooms. 17.5 Points, TC, August 2022.