Bodega Marañones

The Free Bacchus Story

In 2005 Fernando Cornejo began buying vineyard around San Martín de Valdeiglesias one small plot at a time, until the pieces joined up into the Marañones estate. On one visit the owner took his shoes off to walk the vines, so Cornejo did too, and fell for the place. Much of the wines’ early progress was the work of Fernando García, one of the two friends behind Comando G. Since 2021 the estate has belonged to the Alma Carraovejas group, and Javier Blasco makes the wine.

Garnacha is the Spanish name for Grenache, the grape behind Châteauneuf-du-Pape, and in most of Spain it comes out warm, generous and high in alcohol. The granite of the Sierra de Gredos, west of Madrid, turns it the other way: the rock holds little water, the nights stay cool through ripening, and the wines come out pale and scented, closer to red Burgundy. Marañones sits at the eastern end of the range, where it meets the Guadarrama, and grows the local white too, Albillo Real, which smells of white flowers and feels round in the mouth.

About 25 hectares of vines grow on granite between roughly 650 and 900 metres. There is no wire anywhere: every vine is a free-standing bush, and a horse and a mule work the ground. Peña Caballera, the flagship, is a hectare and a half of Garnacha up to 70 years old at the top of the estate, 880 metres up and facing north. In 2023 the bunches macerated with their stems for almost 120 days before 15 months in one 1,500-litre French oak vat.

The EU organic register lists Bodega Marañones under CAEM, the Madrid control body, for growing grapes and making wine, and Demeter lists it as a biodynamic producer and processor. The Demeter work began in 2022, and 2024 is the first vintage allowed to say so on the label.