2018 Valdaya El Valiente Ribera del Duero

Elena Lopez was born into a family of farmers in the small town of Sotillo de la Ribera, in the centre of the largest grape-producing region of Ribera del Duero, Burgos. When Elena married Joaquín González, a native of Barcelona, she joined him in Catalonia where she built a successful career in the decoration and construction business. After a few years they decided to create a winery in her hometown, together with members of Elena's family who would provide the grapes, and thereby forge a lasting relationship between her growing family in Barcelona and her roots in Sotillo.

The first years of Bodegas Valdaya were difficult, but in 2013 everything changed. They recruited a young couple as winemakers, Marta Ramas and Miguel Fisac, who had studied oenology at the University of Bordeaux and learned their trade working in Saint-Emilion, Napa Valley and Capetown in South Africa. With the Valdaya project, they returned to their homeland, Ribera del Duero, to start a new way of vinifying based on micro-fermentation and carrying out each process manually to express the maximum potential of each terroir. The concept was simple: from each of the family growers' nine best plots, they would make nine barrels of wine, maintaining the identity of each parcel through the tiny quantity of wine made in each barrel.

The resulting wines displayed silkiness, elegance, the purity of the fruit, a clear finesse that immediately set them apart from most other wines made in Ribera. This is how the new VALDAYA was born.

Old vines between 30 and 50 years old. Vineyards are at 850-900 metres altitude. Calcareous soils. Manual harvest, bunch selection in the vineyard.  Grapes all destemmed and racked into small stainless steel and concrete tanks in order to control the alcoholic fermentation and the extraction of the wine. Slow and gentle infusion during alcoholic fermentation, to obtain a smooth wine without astringency. Short pump-overs and daily tasting 
until the extraction is optimal. After alcoholic fermentation, the wine is moved into 500-litre barrels of French fine-grained oak with a light toast, where it will undergo malolactic fermentation and aging for 12 months.