Hacienda Monasterio is an estate wine project. All grapes come from their own surrounding vineyards which currently total 95 hectares. It is located in Pesquera de Duero in the province of Valladolid, close to Valbuena’s monastery and to Vega Sicilia, of which it was part in the 19th century. A group of Danish investors purchased it in the late 1980s from the vast Dehesa de los Canónigos property. In barely two years, Hacienda Monasterio changed hands and was sold to a Seville-based company, which subsequently sold the winery in 1994 to the current owners, a group of wine lovers from Jerez’s Garvey including sales manager Carlos del Río, financial director Manuel Piñero and manager Francisco Guerrero.
With Pingus owner Peter Sisseck consulting from the very beginning and winemaker Carlos de la Fuente managing day-to-day tasks, Hacienda Monasterio is one of the most solid ventures within the appellation, their wines enjoying an enviable price positioning among Ribera’s producers. Their flagship red dropped the Crianza category in 2001 and has been marketed as generic (only showing the vintage on the label) ever since. It retails between €32 and €35 in Spain and production reaches 170,000 bottles. At around €50, the Reserva ranges from 16,000 to 21,000 bottles, while the Reserva Especial (€75) hardly reaches 3,000 bottles and is not made every year. These are wines for special occasions, the latter two very suitable to be laid down.
Apart from Tinto Fino (as Tempranillo is locally called), Hacienda Monasterio’s wines include Cabernet Sauvignon, Merlot and Malbec. Vines are planted on a south-facing slope ensuring good ripeness in such an extreme region. The wines are organically certified. Soils have a distinctive chalky character that marks the style of the wines.
Hacienda Monasterio’s wines are know for their balance and velvety textures. More recently, maceration times have been shortened in order to obtain fresher wines with better defined fruit.
In 2014 the company took a major stake in a second winery in the area: Castrillo del Duero-based Montecastro.
