Valduero

Bodegas Valduero was one of the first wineries founded in Ribera del Duero after the region won its DO in 1982. Gregorio García Álvarez started it in 1984 with his daughters Yolanda and Carolina García Viadero, and the family run it still, with Yolanda, trained in oenology, looking after the wines.

Their hundred and forty hectares are all dry-farmed bush vines in the high country of the upper Ribera. De 2 Cotas Reserva, the wine we stock, is pure Tempranillo from two of their highest parcels at 840 and 900 metres, aged for thirty months in oak and a further eighteen in bottle before release. The altitude matters: cool nights up there give the wine freshness to carry all that dark, savoury fruit.