Bodegas y Viñedos Tinedo, Spain

Manuel, Esperanza and Amparo Álvarez-Arenas, have lead the pursuit of terroir-expressive wines since 2002. They have also reinforced social and agricultural sustainability in this area. The funky labels Ja! and Max! are the creative talents of Manuel, winemaker come amateur photographer. These wines are totally organic, raw, vibrant interpretations of La Mancha wines with no oak treatment to mask a pure expression of the fruit.

Viticulture

The Tinedo estate is ideal for practicing a sustainable viticulture, excluding the use of herbicides and synthetic products. The aim is to get balanced and complex wines through a vineyard which completes its biological cycle. The work in the fields and the winery is shared by people thoroughly involved and fully aware of the importance of a common work from the vineyard to the wine. A rigorous monitoring of the water content of the vineyard, at both a ground and leaf level, guides the field work and enables the completion of the whole maturing process at a slow pace. The farm is divided into 30 sectors which are managed independently based on the type of wine that is to be produced according to the soil and the type of plant.

Winemaking

Part of the wine is fermented in 10,000L cement tanks and part in double lined 20,000L stainless steel tanks. The extraction process is always gentle and manual, using destemmed uncrushed grapes, with low fermentation temperatures and maceration which varies depending on the type of grape. The malolactic fermentation takes place in cement tanks and partly in barrels according to the type of wine. The aim of the aging process is to stabilise the wine and to enhance its natural clarification without filtration. For this, cement tanks and barrels in which the lees “fall” more easily are used. All wines have aged at least one winter, having thus stabilised in a natural way.