Urbanita
Vintage 2017: 50% Viura, 50 % Garnacha Blanca
Production in 2017 : 1000 bottles
|
This small project was initiated in Navaridas, just northwest of Logroño (Álava), at the border between the Basque Country and La Rioja. Luis calls this a nomadic viticulture: the origin of the grapes will change over the years, so much so that Luis predicts that the selected plots, and even the final blend could change drastically from vintage to vintage.
The name of this wine, Urbanita, reflects Luis’ love for cities. It’s a wine more reflective about a region and way of making great wines than the desire to make the same wine with the same grapes at the same place, year in, year out. For those who think they have missed the 2016 vintage, it is worth mentioning that Luis experimented a little with this vintage and was quite dissatisfied with the result. A true perfectionist, the production ended up in the sewers… It is quite the opposite for the 2017 vintage, whose provenance has now changed. We tasted it in December 2018: crystalline with yellowish hints drawing on green (yes, like the label), we have the same purity as in 2015, but with more complexity. Luis, faithful to his original plan, has now chosen plots south of his hometown Pamplona, in the province of Navarra. We will probably see several elaborate vintages of these parcels. Now in control of the viticulture and the elaboration of the wine, his signature is obvious. A complex wine, all in finesse, and as he says so well: “sin maquillaje” (without makeup). Viura originates from a plot in Mendigorria, while Garnacha Blanca is grown in San Martin de Unx. As always, using environmentally friendly farming techniques, he uses principles of sustainable non-interventionist agriculture: no plowing of the land, no external fertilizer input, no pesticides, no herbicides or thorough weeding, only superficial manual weeding/trimming. The vineyards planted thirty years ago are located at an altitude of 600 meters. Like his other wines, the winemaking is done with minimal intervention: stainless steel tanks, cooling with frozen water bottles, and low temperature wild yeast fermentation (18 to 22 °C) for 24 hours. The resulting wine is not clarified and undergoes a very light filtration. The wine is aged 6 months in stainless steel tanks prior to bottling. |