NOT YET RATED

2024: 95+ pts Wine Advocate
Drink Date: 2025 - 2035
Always a favorite of mine, the 2024 Villanueva, showcases the finesse of this village red. They managed to work more vineyards in the village. It matured exclusively in a 1,000-liter concrete vat. It has a pale and bright ruby color and an expressive, floral, nuanced and kaleidoscopic nose. The silty soils are reflected in the finesse of the wine, and its floral, spicy and crystalline, with aromatic herbs and very fine, sleek tannins, silky, mineral and ethereal. It was bottled in August 2025, and there are only 1,291 bottles. But there will be 10,000 bottles in 2025!

The village around the new winery, and the silkiest of the three. Where Navatalgordo is granite scoured clean, Villanueva carries silt through the granite, and that silt is what gives the wine its length — the estate talks about the fineness of the soil showing up directly in the tannin. Pale ruby, an expressive floral nose of rose hip and hibiscus, aromatic herbs and spice, and a texture closer to ethereal than structural. By a wide margin the smallest production of the three village wines, and the one to put in front of a Burgundy buyer.

Appellation: Cebreros
Variety: Garnacha
Vine Age: 30–60
Farming: In conversion
Soils: Granitic sand, silt
Altitude: 1000+ meters
Fermentation: Hand harvested, partial whole cluster, natural yeast fermentation in open vats, 40–60 day maceration
Aging: 12 months in French oak vats