Vinedos Hontza 'Vendedor de Humo' Method Ancestral Rosé 2022 (750ml)
$20.00
Female Power
Certified Organic & Biodynamically Farmed. Taste: Pink, light, little bubble but persistant, funny sparkling wine for happy moments.
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In stock: 9 available
Product Details
Style: Pet Nat Sparkling Rosé
Producer: Vinedos Hontza
Grape: 100% Tempranillo
Where: Labraza, Rioja Alavesa
Country: Spain
Taste: Pink, light, little bubble but persistant, funny sparkling wine for happy moments.
Certified Organic, Practicing Biodynamic
.
About the Wine: Direct press, made in the ancestral method - fermentation completes in the bottle. Unfined, unfiltered, zero SO2 added. ‘Vendedor de Humo’ translates more or less to ‘snake oil salesman:’ this is a Tempranillo, but also—not.
About the Producer: Viñedos Hontza is a family project born in 2015. Viñedos Hontza is Iker García and Alice Bridoux, a young couple who initially connected over shared interests in holistic ways farming, the desire to participate in ancestral traditions, and the regeneration of land. García is Basque, hailing from the tiny village of Labraza, in the eastern part of Rioja Alavesa; Bridoux is Belgian. They met after Bridoux spent years studying horticulture, permaculture, and pedagogy in various countries around the world—she’d settled in Spain in hopes of finding a place and project closely linked to nature on which to live and work. After Bridoux and García met, they made the decision to return to García’s family vineyards in Labraza to make something special—as Iker puts it, to reconnect with what his forebears did by developing a new livelihood deeply connected to his native landscape and home village; indeed, García’s grandfather was a shepherd and his father a farmer—about as ancestral Basque as it comes.
In 2015, the began the winery Hontza in Labraza on a hope and a prayer—commercial winemaking has never been practiced in this village, but viticulture in Rioja Alavesa in general is common, as part of traditional mixed agriculturealong with grain cultivation and animal husbandry. This is a special zone for vineyards: it’s north of the Ebro River, struck through with steep gulleys and valleys carved by the tributaries of the area; the soils here are poor and calcareous, and stone walls and terraces for viticulture have been formed for a century and more. There’s also great biodiversity, with lots of surrounding forests and riverbanks intact; and Labraza’s situation is even higher-elevation than much of the lauded subregion Rioja Alta.
When drinking the flagship wine, the village-level wine just called ‘Hontza,’ it has notes of which one might think when thinking of Rioja: dark, nearly black fruit and herbs, depth of flavor—but it has none of the common industrial richness, over-oaked styling, and dry, hot notes of compote fruit. The 560-700m range of elevation, proximity to rivers and forests, and limestone-inflected soils are doing their work here. So is García and Bridoux’s insistence on not utilizing chemicals in the vineyards or during the winemaking process; the wine is dominated by freshness, purity, and clarity of fruit expression.
Add this gift box to your purchase and let us know in the delivery notes what you would like a short message to be. This is a white box with a little shine that fits most bottles of wine and spirits.
Taste: exceptional Champagne, only released in top vintages, shows its rare qualities. Its poise between texture, acidity, intense aging ability and minerality are so right. It is ready to drink, but that would be a shame, because this wine will age well.
