Vallegarcia
The wines of Pago de Vallegarcía are made with grapes from its own vineyard. We have opted for the more traditional, high quality French varieties. The owner wished to capture his knowledge of French wines by giving his wines a personality of their own.
Vineyards
The Vallegarcía vineyard is located at 850m above sea level, in the region of Montes de Toledo and has a total area of 31 hectares. The climate in this region is continental with hot, dry summers and cold, damp winters; the average annual rainfall is 622mm. The soil is made up of highly evolved, acidic material, which comes from the erosion of the oldest mountains of the Iberian Peninsula. The vineyard has been designed by the highly respected Australian professor of viticulture Dr. Richard Smart. Five red varieties have been planted along with a one white, all trained in in a cordon de Royat -which is a unilateral branch on which the spurs are situated, named after the French agricultural school Royat- while the trellis is a Smart-Dyson, spur pruning takes place. Red varieties: Merlot, Cabernet Franc, Cabernet Sauvignon, Syrah and Petit Verdot. White variety: Viognier
The Philosophy of the cellar is to produce very high quality wines from grapes grown in the surrounding vineyards, with a balanced composition, harvested by hand at the optimum moment of ripeness and with the capacity of aging both in the barrel and the bottle.
Winemakers
The grapes are hand harvested at their optimum ripeness. Forty women are responsible for cutting the bunches and placing them in small boxes of around 15kg. These boxes are then collected from the vineyard and on top of a platform pulled by a tractor they reach the northern corner of the winery where they are unloaded onto a sorting table. Then the grapes are destemmed and crushed moving on quickly into the tank-room where the natural fermentation of the must begins.
Vallegarcía is, probably, one of the best equipped and most modern wineries in Spain. The fermentation area has 24 tanks, all them stainless-steel and double jacketed for temperature control during the fermentation process; and also a top of the range pneumatic press. The crushed grapes bursting with must enter the steel tanks where they are chilled to 8ºC and remain there for a certain time, between 72 and 96 hours, this is called pre-fermentation cold maceration and during this process the fresh fruit aromas are extracted from the grapes. Afterwards the fermentation begins and over a period of 21 days the must slowly turns into wine and, by pumping juice over the fermentation cap, more aromas, more colour and the structure that the polyphenols in the grape skins give to the wine are extracted. At the end of the fermentation process the pomace is pressed and the wine is put into barrels.
Grape Info
Location : SpainVineyard : Montes de Toledo
Tasting Room : Yes
Website : Pago de Vallegarcia
