GARCÍA PÉREZ

Altitude | 400-800 metres

Soil | Clay, calcareous, pebbles, limestone base

Approach | Natural, unfiltered, wild yeast, no added sulphites

We first met Fernando García Pérez in 2021, through our mutual friend - winemaker Danilo Marcucci of Conestabile della Staffa. Danilo is often approached by organic winemakers around the world to advise on how to go fully natural, but never before has he agreed to consult outside his home country, Italy… that was until he met the García Pérez family and their old vines, many of them own-rooted and pre-phylloxera, dotted around the south-eastern region of Castilla–La Mancha, in the valley between the Júcar and Cabriel rivers, known for its hot dry summers, cold winters and cool winds from the Levant.

This is Manchuela country, home to the original paella. This is siesta country. This is a farming region so plentiful that they can’t consume it all and so they preserve in jars the fruits (and meats) of the land, to have all year round. This is a region of humble food, spaghetti-western landscapes, dry heat, but also lush vegetation, pine trees, wild rabbits, flowing rivers, and a pace of life so slow and so peaceful it’s as if it is cut off from the rest of the world. Together, the García Pérez family, Danilo and oenologist Maria Garcia Gonzalez have taken this terroir, magically and inexplicably captured by mother nature’s greatest storyteller - the grapevine - and they have bottled it, so that we can all, wherever we are, taste this slower, saltier, sunnier, natural way of life.