Juan Carlos Sancha Peña El Gato 2022

Peña El Gato comes from an old family vineyard in Baños de Río Tobía, in Rioja Alta, in the heart of the Najerilla valley. The bush-trained, organically farmed vines occupy a due-south-facing slope shaped like an amphitheatre, at 650 metres above sea level. The poor, shallow soil combines clay and limestone, naturally limiting yields and concentrating the grapes. In this cool part of Rioja, under Atlantic influence, cold winters, mild summers and wide temperature swings encourage slow ripening and preserve the aromatic expression of the fruit.

The grapes are harvested by hand into 15 kg crates, then destemmed. They go straight into 500-litre French oak barrels from Tronçais, where alcoholic fermentation and ageing take place. The wine spends 11 months in these same vessels. It does not undergo full malolactic fermentation, a choice that helps maintain its freshness and tension. Yields are very low, around 2,500 kg per hectare.

This wine reveals notes of strawberry, raspberry, ripe cherry and black fruit, complemented by hints of violet, dried flowers, smoke, vanilla, tobacco, pepper and dried herbs. The palate offers a structured, complex texture, carried by silky tannins, balanced acidity and a long, fresh and persistent finish.

The history of wine in Spain is so old that no one really knows who brought the first vines to the region. When the Phoenicians arrived some 3,000 years ago and founded the present-day cities of Cádiz and Jerez, viticulture was well established and Spanish wines were widely marketed throughout the Mediterranean and North Africa.



You could say that Spain is a wine miracle. After years spent away from the world of fine wines, she is today a major player. Investment and ambition in the vineyards and cellars results in increasingly rich and complex (often very alcoholic) and spicy reds which are increasingly appreciated by international consumers.



Proud to have more land devoted to vines than any other country, Spain is only beginning to capitalize on this resource consistently. Spain is an anarchic tangle of regions and sub-regions, just as its landscape is an anarchic tangle of incredibly raw landscapes. A glance at a map reveals the climatic diversity among Spain's many wine regions, from the soggy green vineyards of Galicia on the northern Atlantic coast to the toasty vineyards of southeastern the Mediterranean. Spain's saving grace, in terms of viticulture, is the average altitude of its vineyards, above 600 meters. A large part of Spanish vineyards therefore manage to produce grapes of good color and acidity simply because night temperatures are relatively low and the grapes do not ripen until the end of a sufficiently long growing period.



But there is real treasure to be found for those willing to dig and, now that a class of connoisseurs has developed in Spain, all manner of ambitious investors have done their part to change the image of Spanish wine . Today, a new generation of winemakers has quietly begun making spectacular wines and experimenting with grape varieties that would have been unthinkable just a short time ago. Wine remains an important commodity and is an integral part of Spanish culture.