{"id":246,"date":"2019-02-05T08:44:19","date_gmt":"2019-02-05T08:44:19","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.independentfamilywineries.com\/?p=246"},"modified":"2024-12-17T17:29:28","modified_gmt":"2024-12-17T16:29:28","slug":"bodegas-vallemayor-wines-to-drink","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/independentfamilywineries.com\/en\/bodegas-vallemayor-wines-to-drink\/","title":{"rendered":"Bodegas Vallemayor, wines to drink"},"content":{"rendered":"

Located in Fuenmayor, one of Rioja\u2019s historical villages<\/strong>, Bodegas Vallemayor continues with the family tradition of making fine wines that was inherited from the founder, Luis P\u00e9rez Foncea, even though classical wines were frowned upon by the critics in a not too distant past. \u201cWe make wines that we feel are the historical expression of this area,\u201d explains Rafael. \u201cMy father was a fine wine producer and a great connoisseur of all the wines from Spain thanks to his work as n\u00e9gociant.\u201d<\/p>\n

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Rafael and his brother grew up with those classic and delicate Rioja wines; colour and structure were important but not as much as finesse. \u201cThere were fine wines and syrupy wines, wines to drink and wines to taste; we decided to make wines to drink\u201d.<\/p>\n

The P\u00e9rez Gonz\u00e1lez brothers own 70 hectares of vineyards<\/strong>, 60 of them in the vicinity of Fuenmayor. In fact, their focus since they took control of Vallemayor has been securing more land. \u201cWe have invested heavily over the years; when our dad past away in 2006, we had 35 hectares of vines. We have been working in drywall offices in the winery until recently to ensure our grape supply.\u201d<\/p>\n

Vallemayor bottles 50% of its production and sells the remainder in bulk. \u201cDuring the harvest, we must make room in the tanks to ensure that our wine production reaches every single one of our sales channels. We do this without renouncing to offer consistent quality throughout the entire vintage,\u201d they explain. \u201cBesides, making wines in bulk gives us the capacity to take on increased bottlings using our own wines.\u201d<\/p>\n

The winery\u2019s portfolio includes three different ranges. The entry level wines are a white, a ros\u00e9 and a red<\/strong>. \u201cAll of them are destemmed and fresh; we sacrifice power to gain finesse,\u201d says Rafael. Vallemayor Crianza, Reserva and Gran Reserva represent a more traditional style. \u201cWe blend Tempranillo with a little bit of Mazuelo and Graciano; the latter two gain more presence in the wines with longer ageing. In terms of oak barrels, we tend to use a higher proportion of French oak in wines meant for prolonged ageing.\u201d<\/p>\n

Lastly, the Vallemayor range includes two single vineyard wines, <\/strong>Vi\u00f1a La Encineda and Vi\u00f1a Cerradilla<\/strong>, and a barrel-fermented white from 60-year-old Viura vines. \u201cThese grapes are sourced from old vines and are fermented in new oak; the wines are more modern, but we maintain our own style in terms of ripening and extraction.\u201d<\/p>\n

As befits their classic style, Vallemayor sells most of its wine to the UK<\/strong>. \u201cOut of the 450,000 bottles we produce, over 200,000 are sent to the British market. The recession wiped out our on-trade distribution in Spain and we don\u2019t pursue an aggressive commercial policy to carve a niche in the supermarket shelves.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Located in Fuenmayor, one of Rioja\u2019s historical villages, Bodegas Vallemayor continues with the family tradition of making fine wines that was inherited from the founder, Luis P\u00e9rez Foncea, even though [\u2026]<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":256,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[17],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-246","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-wineries"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/independentfamilywineries.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/246","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/independentfamilywineries.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/independentfamilywineries.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/independentfamilywineries.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/independentfamilywineries.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=246"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/independentfamilywineries.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/246\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":247,"href":"https:\/\/independentfamilywineries.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/246\/revisions\/247"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/independentfamilywineries.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/256"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/independentfamilywineries.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=246"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/independentfamilywineries.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=246"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/independentfamilywineries.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=246"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}