Convento San Francisco

Bodega Convento San Francisco is at Calle Calvario 22 in Peñafiel, in the Valladolid half of Ribera del Duero. It was founded in 1998, and it is built into what was left of the Franciscan convent that had stood on the site since 1265. They did it properly rather than cheaply. The new buildings use stone, mudéjar brick and timber to match what was already there, the barrel hall occupies the rebuilt stables and granaries where the friars used to store their harvests, and the whole complex is arranged around a plain Franciscan garden.

The vineyards are the serious part. They own eleven hectares at Pesquera de Duero, certified organic, split into three parcels with different soils and different altitudes. They own another two hectares at Fuentenebro, over the boundary in Burgos province, planted in 1920 and 1940; that is the La Zapatera vineyard, sitting at 920 metres on terraces of red clay and quartz stones with wild aromatic herbs growing round it. On top of that they farm around twenty-five hectares alongside growers they trust, mostly very old vines in small parcels on slopes and páramos, on clay, sand and limestone.

Some numbers that put that in context. The fruit going into the standard Convento San Francisco bottling comes from Gumiel de Izán, La Horra, Quintana del Pidio and Fuentenebro, between 760 and 970 metres, off vines averaging eighty-six years old. That is not a normal set of vineyards for a bodega founded in 1998, and it is the single reason these wines are worth their money.

The winemaking is deliberately old-fashioned. Everything is picked by hand into fifteen-kilo crates and sorted twice, once by bunch and then again by berry after destemming. Parcels are fermented separately in stainless tanks of varying sizes, and some in 500 litre barrels, with punch-downs and pump-overs done by hand every day. Ageing is in French and American oak, and the time in barrel is decided vintage by vintage rather than by a formula. They are explicit that they treat every year as a different problem to solve.

The range starts with Primer Año, the young wine, and runs through the Convento San Francisco crianza (at least twelve months in French and American oak), Selección Especial, which they only make in years they think deserve it, the single-vineyard La Zapatera, and Aldeasoña, which is fermented whole-bunch on its own yeasts in open 500 litre barrels with treading and punching down before about two years in barriques. They also make a white from Albillo off their oldest vines.

Selección Especial and La Zapatera are the top of the range, and both are made in very small quantities: in 2018 the run came to 3,622 bottles of the Selección Especial and 2,779 of the La Zapatera.