|
In Valladolid, in the municipality of Cigales, a new wine project has been launched with an unusual charm. The birth of Bodegas Hiriart represents a major success for the Muñoz Conde family, who recovered the abandoned family tradition for more than three decades, and for the Designation of Origin Cigales, which incorporates to its exclusive list a new winery of special uniqueness.
Bottled a little over a month, the quality of its wines has led them to dazzle on the tables of some of the most outstanding restaurants in the capital. But this latest project aims to become a benchmark of the market, not only because of the excellence of its wines, but also because of the enclave where the wineries are located.
The construction of its facilities on an ancient underground cave dating back to 1750, where the famous' claret ' of Cigales was elaborated over two centuries, is the key to the uniqueness and splendor of the settlement of these wineries.
On these old facilities, the Muñoz Conde brothers have built a modern winery, where it joins tradition with new technologies of wine production to ensure quality, the primary objective of this project born from a passion for wine and commitment in regaining the family soul.
Both facilities are united, 1,027 square meters of new construction and 400 meters underground inherited from the eighteenth century, which will open its doors to visitors in a short space of time to linger on the old and new ways of producing quality wines in our country.
In the old winery, which galleries were dug by hand, the wine was made using a press into the traditional beam, which still retains the original stone. Throughout the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, were gradually replacing the deposits of mud and wood for cement, and although the press with which it is worked today is of hydraulic technology, these galleries are the vestiges of the great-great-grandparents of the Muñoz Conde, wool traders with France, who joined the best of Bordeaux and Castilla wine culture.
The search for the highest quality in its wines is the main tenet of this winery, confesses Carlos Muñoz, one of the initiators of the project, but not the only one. Hiriart wants to become a centre of cultural attraction in the area, which aims to create within this unique and beautiful winery an Exhibition and Concerts Center. In the development of this initiative, he already has the contribution of the artist Manuel Sierra, who was in charge of designing Hiriart, and who also will expose his works in the cellar, as well as Paco Díez and La Bazanca, who will collaborate in the ambitious project of restoring the traditional folklore in the unparalleled framework that brings wine culture.
With Tempranillo, Grenache and Viura, Hiriart has achieved a wine of sparkling and complex nose, with notes of raspberry and violet. His tasty and intense end configures the essence of success of his Rosado 2007, presented publicly at the end of May in Valladolid. This one will be followed by the production of reds, which expect 50 French oak barrels and 50 other American oak ones, where will be aged to become “crianza” and “reserva”.
For the moment, the family is preparing the production of 20 hectares of vineyards of their property, but in their forthcoming expansion plans are aimed at increasing the planting, with the intention of restoring traditional grape varieties in the area - "gray grenache” "black grenache" and "mencia" - as element differentiator of wines of the land.
Bodegas Hiriart is a project initiated this year, but the expectations indicate that it will give much about what to speak.
|
