Viña Sastre is an iconic, family-run winery in the heart of Ribera del Duero, famous for making long-lived, elegantly structured reds from organic, old-vine, goblet-trained tempranillo grown near the Duero river. Jesús Sastre’s Reserva comes from estate Pagos Las Navas, Carra Santamaría, Fuentenarro, Carranaguix, Valdelayegua, Las Tenadas near the town of La Horra at 830m. Sastre handcrafts classic wines through extremely low-yielding biodynamic farming methods, fermenting exclusively with native yeasts, and bottling with low sulfur.
Viña Sastre’s Reserva is a stunning new release of a historic style from Ribera del Duero not currently made by most producers nowadays, many of whom value quantity over quality. Jesús Sastre has chosen specific parcels from vineyards planted in 1964 around his key village of La Horra, in the appellation’s qualitative center, where vines are planted in the dense, stony clay-calcareous soils. These soils form the backbone of the region’s famous ageable red wines, capable of improving for decades in bottle. He has chosen to make a Reserva selection to make accessible a classic, ageable village wine with the goal of expressing the greatness of his village of La Horra. Grapes are hand-harvested into boxes with a selection in the field, followed by a very critical sorting in the winery; only the best grapes go into Viña Sastre Reserva. His wines are always spontaneously fermented with native yeasts from the vineyard and are never fined or filtered. This process is all a part of Jesús’ vision for making wine in the most natural way possible. The vision is natural, or ancestral: wine at the very highest level.
Vinification
Following a manual harvest, bunches are sorted in the vineyard and also at the winery for quality. The wine is spontaneously fermented with native yeasts in stainless steel, undergoing a long maceration on the skins. The wine is cold stabilized naturally by moving the wine from the barrel room to separate tanks in a part of the winery whose temperature is naturally regulated by the outdoor winter temperatures. It is then racked into French and American oak barrels (70% new) of exceptional cooperage for 14 months before being bottled unfined and unfiltered. It is then bottle-aged for an additional ten months before release. Only a very minimal amount of sulfur is added at bottling.
Region
Castilla y León
Appellation
Ribera del Duero
Sites
Las Navas, Carra Santamaría, Fuentenarro, Carranaguix, Valdelayegua, Las Tenadas
Village
La Horra
Elevation
800-830m
Grapes
Tempranillo
Vine Age
Vines planted in 1964
Soil
Stony clay calcareous
Fermentation
Spontaneous fermentation with native yeasts in stainless steel
Aging
14 months in 70% new French and American oak barrels, ten months in bottle
Farming
Practicing Organic, Practicing Biodynamic
S02
19 mg/L free
Vegan
Yes
ABV
14.5%
Pack Size
12x750mL