Bodegas Mauro

The Free Bacchus Story

Mariano García was born at Vega Sicilia, where his father worked, and made its wine from 1968 to 1998. In the late 1970s a friend offered him about four hectares of old vines, to be paid for whenever he liked, because otherwise they were coming out. García took them, and a 17th-century house in Tudela de Duero that was due to be knocked down, and named the wine after his father, Mauro. His sons Alberto and Eduardo run it now.

Tempranillo is Spain’s great red grape, the one behind Rioja. Along the Duero it is called Tinto Fino, and on the dry Castilian plateau it comes out darker and more structured than in Rioja. Ribera del Duero is the famous name on this river. When its boundaries were drawn in 1982, Tudela was left outside, and for years Mauro’s labels could not state a vintage, a grape or an ageing time. It is still sold as Vino de la Tierra de Castilla y León.

The vines are free-standing bushes on light clay and limestone, picked by hand plot by plot and fermented with their own wild yeasts. Mauro VS, first made in 1994, is a selection of old vineyards around Tudela and neighbouring Traspinedo, moved without pumps and aged two years in French oak.

The family farmed organically for five years, then took up biodynamics in 2015, and David Cancela, who runs production, says it has forced them to spend more time in the vineyard. CCL Certificación, the organic control body for Castilla y León, certifies the vineyards and the winery there, so the wine is certified organic, and the Basque body ENEEK certifies the family’s vineyards at Baños de Ebro in Rioja Alavesa. Demeter certifies the vineyards in both regions but lists Bodegas Mauro as a producer only, not a processor, so the grapes are Demeter-certified and the wine is not.