Navaherreros Garnacha de Bernabeleva 2017

Description

Navaherreros Garnacha de Bernabeleva

Navaherreros Garnacha de Bernabeleva has a wild, bright, bold perfume of sweet berry fruit and spice, faint herbs, graphite, sea spray and Chinese five spice. The palate is silky and fairly full-bodied with sweet cherry, raspberry and nutmeg with fine tannins overlaid by a lovely fresh fruitiness. The finish is very, very long with a stony minerality.

In 1923, Dr Vicente Álvarez-Villamil bought Bernabeleva, an estate in San Martín de Valdeiglesias (Madrid). It is located at the foot of the Cerro de Guisando and the Gredos mountains and adjacent to the Tórtolas stream that formed the border of two Roman provinces: Lusitania and Tarraconense.

For decades, Dr Álvarez-Villamil’s descendants have fondly taken care of the old vines he planted, with the intention of someday producing quality honest wines.

Now run by cousins Juan and Santiago Bulnes together with superstar Spanish winemaker, Raul Perez,and Bernabeleva cellar master, Marc Isart Pinos. They farm biodynamically and harvest the Grenache grapes from several different sites. They then vinify them separately in either steel, concrete or neutral oak – depending on what’s best for those particular grapes.

In Bernabeleva, they work the vineyard with a respect for balance with nature. Eco labels are not their aim, although they work to be worthy of them. The wines, produced from autochthonous varieties, show off differences in orientation, vegetation, altitude and soil of each locale. In the winery, they attempt to maintain the virtues of the raw material they obtain from the vineyard.

Their wines express the characteristics of the vineyards and their surroundings, and their viticulture is in tune with its environment, for they understand it is the only way to work.

They own 35 hectares of old vines- mainly Garnacha and Albillo – with some Moscatel de Grano menudo and red Morenillo. Some other different varieties are found in the vineyard, since replacements were done with available plants.

The soils are tawny sands formed from decomposed granite rock, with relatively high acidity and limited amounts of nutrients. Annual rainfall is around 628 mm per year. The vineyards have different orientations and sizes, from 500 square meters to 3 hectares, on slopes, hillsides and foothills. Soils are shallow on the higher plots, which are over 830 meters above sea level.