Bodegas Valduero

Website: www.bodegasvalduero.com

Bodegas Valduero was founded in 1984 by the current president, Don Gregorio Garcia Viadero, and his daughter Yolanda, who is the winemaker. It was one of the first wineries to be incorporated into the D.O. Ribera del Duero and is situated in the village of Gumiel de Mercado, within the province of Burgos, an area where some of the best grapes in Ribera del Duero are grown. We are also probably the highest winery in the region at 840m (2,750 ft).

The red wines we make here are all 100% Tinto Fino and the grapes come from our own gobelet vineyards, planted using a 2,60m x 1,15m formation.

Vineyard age ranges from 12 to over 40 years old and the vines are very low yielding. The root stock has graft cuttings from a vineyard of indigenous vines over 100 years old. The soil is mainly clay, with limestone and some sandy patches.

We use traditional cultivation techniques and only natural, organic fertilizer. We do not irrigate and our yields are between 1.500kg/ha and 4.700kg/ha. All our grapes are harvested by hand in small crates.

The whole winery has a natural, constant temperature of 12ºc, due to the fact that it is buried under ground. This enables us to carry out slow crianzas which allow the wine to stabilize naturally.

Some of our wines also spend much of their crianza in a cellar where the atmosphere at 20m below ground helps to create unique and complex aromas.

We use a combination of oak barrels made from American, French and East European oak. The barrels are all 225l and are replaced every four years.

15 years ago we acquired vines in D.O. Toro, close to the village of Valdefinjas and started to make wine in this region too, focusing on a younger, more fruit driven style of wine that we felt best expressed the region. Our Toro wines are all 100% Tinta de Toro.

In our sandy soil in Toro, the roots of our vines can penetrate to more than 3m. Some are nearly 100 years old.

Our Toro wines show elegance combined with the natural power of the terroir.