In the last two decades, Villanueva de Ávila has lost almost 50% of its people. With 10.2 residents per km², this village 125 km west of Madrid on the north side of the Gredos mountains is, according to the European Union's criteria, at high risk of depopulation. As in so many places in the so called Empty Spain, there are no shops, the school closed years ago and the doctor only drives there a couple of times a week to check on the locals, the vast majority of whom are elderly.
Despite all this, there are people like Bárbara Requejo and Guzmán Sánchez -harvest of '92 and '89, respectively- who are convinced that Villanueva de Ávila is the ideal place to settle down and carve out a future for themselves.
The choice of Villanueva was no accident. Guzmán's father was born there, and although the family lived in Ávila, the Sánchez always maintained a link with the village and the family vineyards, so much so that Guzmán moved to Villanueva in 2016 to open La Querencia, after working as a chef at prestigious restaurants such as Zalacaín in Madrid or El Almacén in Ávila. Not only is it the best place to eat and drink in Gredos, but La Querencia also allowed him to meet Bárbara, a talented winemaker from Valladolid with experience in wineries such as Château Haut-Brion (Bordeaux), Pierre Peters (Champagne), Quartz Reef (New Zealand), Viña Ventisquero (Chile) and Peay Vineyards (California), and a regular customer thanks to her job as technical director at Soto y Manrique winery in Cebreros between 2017 and early 2020.
Guzmán made wine for La Querencia from his father's vines and those of other neighbours in Villanueva. During the pandemic, when the restaurant was closed, he turned his attention to the family vineyards and, thanks to Bárbara's support and technical knowledge, this hobby became the couple's central project. At Las Pedreras they farm vineyards in the Alto Alberche valley, the westernmost, coldest and highest part of the Gredos mountains ( 900 metres on average), with a continental mountain climate and 1,200 mm of rainfall a year, some of which is snow.
Their first vintage in this rugged, granite-rich region was in 2020. By then, Comando G, the winery that brought international fame to Gredos, had already scored 100 Parker points with Rumbo al Norte, its outstanding Garnacha from Villanueva, and interest in the Alberche Valley was growing with new projects such as Amigos del Tiempo (with Raúl Pérez as winemaker), Rico Nuevo (Juanan Martín and Julio Prieto) and Alto Horizonte (Aurelio García and Micaela Rubio), among others. "We saw that prices were rising and we knew that we would not be able to compete in this market. Gredos has great potential with its old vineyards, and indeed we invested our savings in buying old vines, but we also saw the opportunity to focus on planting new vines and growing them with an open mind and more freedom," explains Bárbara.
Guzmán's father was delighted that they wanted to plant vines in his village and showed them La Encarabenera, a vast mountainous site in Navarrevisca at 1230 metres above sea level and at the limit of cultivation, where roe deer live at ease among scrubland, forests and huge rocks. From here, on a clear day, you can see almost the whole of the Alberche valley, the Las Pedreras peak that gives the project its name, and even the Guadarrama mountain range, 90 km away as the crow flies. In La Encarabenera, the Sánchez family had a one-hectare plot where they grew rye 50 years ago. "We fell in love with the place as soon as we saw it, so in 2020 we started the paperwork for the necessary permits and planted in early 2022," explains Bárbara, apologising for making us walk along a narrow dirt track to the new vineyard. "My old van has holes in the roof, and since it rained yesterday, the seats get wet. It's a summer vehicle," she jokes.
The costly task of clearing such rocky terrain in an isolated and forgotten area is compounded by the need to fence the vineyard to protect it from animals. Fortunately, the land has never been treated with chemical products, which is in keeping with the couple's philosophy of working organically, with strict dry farming and favouring live soils. The planting material comes from their old Garnacha vines in Villanueva, plus some Garnacha Blanca from the nursery - there are virtually no white varieties in Alto Alberche, apart from some Chelva and Jaén grown for eating.
Although the vines are still very young and they haven't been able to dig any test pits, Bárbara and Guzmán see potential in La Encarabenera. "We were expecting a poorer, rockier soil, but in fact only the top corner changes completely. It's much whiter there, with more broken stones, and the plants are a fifth the size of the rest," explains Bárbara. "It is a vineyard with vigour and we believe that this is partly due to the massal selection. The plants are already adapted to the climatic conditions of the area".
However, they have to be careful of erosion caused by the winter rains. "We are going to plant cover crops because the slope is steep, but for now we have to plough because the vines are young and we don't want too much competition, especially in the summer," says Bárbara. Another risk they have to live with in the Alto Alberche is spring frosts. "Last year, a vineyard in Villanueva, which is wetter, froze, while here only a few plants in the first rows were damaged. Fortunately, it is protected from the north by a cliff”.
After buying La Encarabenera, Guzmán and Bárbara decided to invest the rest of their savings in the purchase of two old vines from which they make their two paraje (site) wines, Vertiente de las Ánimas and Pelito Lindo.
Vertiente las Ánimas, at 1070 metres elevation and facing north-east, consists of three 0.6 ha plots of old Garnacha surrounded by chestnut trees, oaks and scrubland. It is located in a paraje called Las Herguijuelas, a pleasant walk from Villanueva. Here they have also bought a piece of land that used to be a vineyard, where they have planted 1,000 m2 of a massal selection of Garnacha.
Located in the foothills of Las Pedreras, this area is particularly cold, humid and shaded, which is why many vineyards have been uprooted or abandoned. "In 2021, the grapes were harvested in the first week of October with very high acidity. Imagine 30 years ago, when it was even colder and the grapes did not ripen for the style of wine they were looking for; the elders who had vines in Villanueva and Navatalgordo, a warmer area near the river, preferred the Navatalgordo vines," explains Bárbara, who warns that age and quality do not always go hand in hand. "Although we are very grateful to be able to grow old vineyards, we know that not all of them are preserved for the reasons we are interested in today."
Bárbara and Guzmán are concerned about the abandonment of vineyards as a result of the rural exodus and their subsequent conversion into woodland. Their worries are shared by other local producers and the local authorities, who are keen to revitalise the area as more than just a mountain summer destination, given its proximity to Madrid. Forestry legislation restricts and controls changes to scrubland, oak groves and forest clearance, but according to Bárbara, the only hope for the area is to recover its wine-growing past. "I understand the problem of deforestation that we have in Spain, but it is not the same to cut down forests to farm an area where there used to be vineyards as it is to build country houses. Vineyards and forests can coexist in perfect harmony”.
Fires like the one in the Sierra de Ávila in the summer of 2022, which reached the fringes of Burgohondo, are also a major concern for the region's winegrowers. "Imagine how stressful it was for us to know that we had a vineyard with a cover crop and a high risk that the fire would destroy it. The forest is like a house; you have to take care of it and clean it so that it is not a risk to you or others. Why can someone who inherits a few hectares forget about them? It doesn't make sense, but the fact is that farming is considered a third-class job," Barbara laments. "There are still possibilities for recovery, but legislation needs to be revised in favour of the people who live in rural areas."
Las Pedreras also owns about 0.7 ha of old vines in Navahondilla to the west of Villanueva (not to be confused with the village of Navahondilla, also in Ávila, but in the eastern foothills of Gredos). In this area, which has survived because the local farmers made wine for their homes, there is more wine-growing activity and better-tended vineyards.
To get to the vines of Las Pedreras we walk past an old cairn, a vineyard fenced in with a metal railing (owned by Amigos de Tiempo) and another one with stakes in the plants (owned by Comando G, which has just built its new winery in this area). According to Bárbara, all the producers have a good relationship with each other. "The Alto Alberche valley is such a remote area with so little infrastructure that we really have no choice. Dani and Fer, from Comando G, have lent us a fermentation tank this year and we have lent our destemmer to Amigos de Tiempo. Juanan from Rico Nuevo lets me use his lab for my analyses and I help him as much as I can.”
Their Pelito Lindo wine comes from Navahondilla, in the heart of the Alberche Valley. On these terraces dotted with huge stones, the yield is low (600 kg) and all the work is done by hand, from pruning the vines in winter to harvesting in autumn. It is divided into two sections because it once belonged to two people, one of whom was called Pelito Lindo. Guzmán, who according to Bárbara is very good at dealing with people —and has also been looking after Pelito Lindo's vineyard since 2018 — managed to get his heirs to sell it to him, while the other part, which belonged to an elderly villager, was bought in 2021. "The first time we produced it was in 2020, and the barrel showed signs of having its own character. The 2021 vintage was fantastic and we released it for the first time," says Bárbara, climbing the terraces with the agility and energy of her 31 years.
Eventually they would like to build more terraces on the remaining slopes, but they have to do it step by step. "It would be interesting to develop the figure of the independent grower who lives only of his grapes, something that does not exist today. What's more, there is only one winery in the area that makes a living as a bodega; we survive thanks to Guzmán's restaurant and my consultancy work."
The Sánchez family house in the Barrio de los Arroyuelos quarter of Villanueva served as the winery for the first three vintages. It is a traditional dry-stone building with a meadow and a small museum of local agricultural tools and artifacts collected by Guzmán's father. Despite the compact space, Bárbara and Guzmán managed to vinify 32,000 kg of grapes. "We are underground and the ageing conditions are very good, but it is difficult to work here because everything is done manually and cleaning the barrels was very difficult," says Bárbara.
Since the 2023 vintage, the couple have moved to a building that the Villanueva local government rents out to new wine projects such as Las Pedreras or Agrourdiense, another small winery where Barbara helps out as a consultant. "It is much easier to work here, but we plan to keep the old bodega for visits," she adds.
The charming and well-kept Barrio de Los Arroyuelos, one of the 19 settlements that grew around the farming and grazing lands and eventually merged in the mid-20th century to form the current village of Villanueva, lends its name to one of the wines from Las Pedreras.
Barrio de Los Arroyuelos (5,200 bottles, €16) is a blend of up to 20 plots of Garnacha from three villages: Villanueva de Ávila, Burgohondo and Navatalgordo. Each vineyard is vinified depending on the characteristics of the vintage, and aged separately in oak barrels of different sizes or in stainless steel tanks before a final blend is decided. It is one of their two regional wines from the Alberche Valley, along with El Arquitón (4,000 bottles, €16), their first cuvée in 2020. The latter is a direct-pressed Garnacha rosé, fermented and aged without racking in seasoned oak barrels. For the first vintage, 600 bottles, they used only Alto Alberche vineyards, but now they also buy grapes from San Juan de Molinillo, a village in the Sierra de Ávila at 1050 m elevation. "We like this area for our rosé because the vines have higher yields and ripen a little slower," says Bárbara.
Vertiente de las Animas (1,000 bottles, €33) is the result of separate vinification of the sites. They realised that the three plots that make up this perfumed, delicate and mineral wine were special in quality and character. Typically the last site to be harvested, the wine is aged for 10 months in 225-litre Sylvain and 500-litre Stockinger oak barrels.
Pelito Lindo is the second vino de paraje (1,000 bottles, €50) and comes from Navahondilla, where they own three vineyards on pink granite soils that give the wine animal and smoky nuances. Deep and complex, the wine is made with 30% whole clusters and is aged in the same way as Vertiente de las Animas. "I don't have any fixed rules for the reds," says Bárbara. "Every year is different. I like to work with whole bunches, but only to a limited extent. And as for the macerations, they are shorter or longer, depending on the vintage." As she works with old, unirrigated vines, the harvest is very important, she says, although she admits that before coming to Gredos her work was always more focused on the winery than on the vineyard, and she learned by trial and error. "The 2021 vintage was very good, 2022 was a disaster here and we are happy with 2023.”
Burbujas de Arquitón, Linarejos and La Coronela are small releases that Bárbara calls her "satellite cuvées". While the rest of her range is under DO Cebreros, these three are out. Burbujas de Arquitón (600 bottles, €22) is a sparkling pet-nat aged for 16 months to help the bubbles integrate and refine. Light, refreshing and fruity, it is a simple wine that can be enjoyed effortlessly. Linarejos (700 bottles, €24) is an Albillo Real from a plot planted in Cebreros in 1921. When they bought it in 2021, it was badly neglected and only 200 litres were made in demijohns. As the resulting wine did not convince them, and their philosophy is assemblage, one day while drinking a bottle of Cvne Monopole Clásico they had the idea of adding 6% manzanilla. Their British importer liked the result so much that he bought the whole production, but now that they have a 300-litre barrel and demijohns, the wine is also sold in Spain (Massal Selection and Cuatrogatos are the distributors). Yields in this vineyard are limited, but they do not rule out buying grapes in Cebreros or a Sanlúcar butt if they decide to increase production.
La Coronela (1,000 bottles, €28) connects Bárbara to her roots in Roa, her maternal family's village in Ribera del Duero. Her grandmother owns an old Tempranillo vineyard there, with some white grapes (5%), which Bárbara harvests and vinifies in Villanueva. She uses some whole bunches and ages the wine for 12 months in seasoned barrels, trying to find a balance between the character of the Tempranillo from Roa and the wines she likes, with acidity and freshness.
The goals now are to gain a better understanding of their 3.5 ha of old vines and new plots, stabilise production at 20,000-25,000 bottles, look after their markets (they export 90%), plant more as Las Pedreras consolidates, continue to serve good food and wine at La Querencia, and live and start a family in the village. Like the great granite boulders that define the landscape of this harsh and sparsely populated land, Bárbara and Guzmán are here to stay in Gredos.
