Manuel Cantalapiedra, a winemaker who plays to his own tune

Unlike many of his contemporaries, Manuel Cantalapiedra, 36, has not had extensive harvesting experience in different wine regions across the globe. His first passion, which emerged relatively late at the age of 16, was music.

His perseverance at the piano earned him a place at Musikene, a prestigious music school in the Basque Country. However, he soon realised he was at a disadvantage compared to fellow students who had been training since childhood.  Faced with this challenge, he made a radical change and decided to support his father Isaac's wine-growing business in La Seca, within the DO Rueda.

Manuel studied Agricultural Engineering before completing a Master’s in Viticulture and Oenology at the Polytechnic University of Madrid. "The master’s course opened up a whole new world of opportunities and introduced me to fresh perspectives. In Castilla y León, we often have a very local mindset and struggle to accept different views,” he admits.

After finishing his studies in February 2014, he spent a month as an intern at Bodegas José Pariente. That same year, he took on his first harvest as a winemaker. The family set aside 29,000 kilos of grapes from their vineyards to make the first Cantayano (€12), the estate's flagship white wine, which has since grown to 50,000 bottles.

A determination to be different 

Looking back, this was a defining moment for both the winery's positioning and the style of its wines. “We considered hiring a consultant to help me gain experience, but I didn't want to make the same wines as everyone else. Meeting Beatriz Herranz from Barco del Corneta was a turning point,” he explains.

The winery started with part of the 21 hectares his father grew in the village of La Seca. For a time, they continued selling grapes to other wineries in Rueda, but now they use their entire harvest and have expanded with the purchase of additional vineyards in the area. This shift has brought significant changes, including the elimination of irrigation and the abandonment of Sauvignon Blanc. The five hectares they had were regrafted with Verdejo cuttings from La Otea, an extremely old, ungrafted vineyard. 

“The style of our wines is deeply connected to dry farming," Manuel explains. “We grow about 2,200 plants per hectare and get a maximum of 3,000 to 4,000 kilos per hectare. We also reduce yields by green pruning, but we don't throw away bunches because it makes no sense to waste something that the vine has spent its energy producing; it's like throwing away food. In general, we prefer to let things happen naturally."

Cantalapiedra also buys grapes from family growers, in particular a cousin whose vineyards are organically certified and aligned with their philosophy. However, they differentiate between estate-owned and third-party grapes. The latter are destined to a range of sulphur-free négociant wines, named after the Spanish expression mondo y lirondo, meaning clean and without additives. With a strong export presence, particularly in Canada, Lirondo (70,000 bottles, €12) is fermented and aged in stainless steel tanks, while Mondo (3,000 bottles, €22) offers greater depth after a year in oak.

Cantalapiedra currently produces around 160,000 bottles a year under the VT Castilla y León seal. Initially, the winery was  part of DO Rueda, but its first vintage in 2014 vintage failed to meet classification standards and was subjected to further scrutiny. As the 2015 vintage had a similar profile, Manuel decided not to submit samples, leaving  the DO the following year without ever using the Rueda seal.

The doubts raised by the technicians in the regulatory board were closely tied to Manuel's approach to winemaking. He is a staunch advocate of must oxidation and does not add sulphites practically until bottling, sticking to reductive ageing and controlled oxidation. He is fascinated by the purity and crystalline quality of the wines aged in this manner and is constantly pondering the impact  of sulphur additions, (even though levels remain quite low at 20 to 40 mg/l) particularly how they might enhance certain nuances while intensifying bitterness. 

The untamed spirit of Verdejo 

Spending a morning tasting and walking the vineyards with Manuel is an experience filled with insights, discoveries and candid reflections on both his doubts and frustrations. His perspective on Verdejo is particularly interesting -he sees it as a rustic, wild and challenging grape to grow. To begin with, its creeping nature makes pruning difficult. "In goblet-trained vineyards, if you guide the branches outwards, you risk snapping them with the tractor," he points out. Growers must also decide how close to the ground bunches should be, depending on whether the soil is sandy or stony. Harvesting by hand is equally demanding, as the small bunches tend to be hidden within the foliage.

“In new plantings, I would opt for a trellised system, but not in the way it has traditionally been done here,” he says. “As green pruning is not widely practiced, growers often leave the plant’s final shoot, which is very vigorous. This leads to excessive growth, affecting the vine’s shape and shortening its lifespan.” Manuel prefers a single guyot pruning system, in contrast to the more widespread double guyot method.

When it comes to winemaking, he favours oak over stainless steel, which he would prefer to eliminate altogether, concrete or earthenware. He believes these latter materials add a density that Verdejo already possesses naturally. “The great challenge for me is to make wines full of energy,” he explains.

Focusing on 500-litre barrels and foudres, he has learned that the key lies in selecting the right type of wood  –often a matter of budget– and the correct proportion of new oak. He likens winemaking to playing the violin: just as a musician must master the bow to produce the perfect note, a winemaker must refine every stage of the process to achieve precision in the final wine.  For Verdejo, he prefers wood that makes a strong initial impression but gradually fades. With this in mind, he has extended oak ageing to two years for El Espejo (6,700 bottles, €36) and La Otea (2,000 bottles, €50), the winery’s top single-vineyard wines. Previously, they spent one year in oak and another one in stainless steel tanks. The change takes effect with the 2023 vintage.

Pebbles and sand 

The family's most important vineyards, which lend their names to two of their Verdejos, are El Espejo and El Chivitero –though the latter had to be renamed El Chiviritero (16,000 bottles, €22) due to a legal challenge from a major Spanish brand. These adjacent sites, located northwest of La Seca, benefit from the wind that blows steadily across the area, yet they exhibit notable differences between them.

El Chivitero lies on a small plateau on the region's classic stony soils, with abundant pebbles on the surface and a higher clay content, which usually translates into a wider mouthfeel. The layer of limestone marl found one metre below adds a mineral edge to this structure. Some of the vines are goblet-trained; others trellised.

By contrast, El Espejo is a northwest-facing slope with a 8% gradient that gently descends from the winery's location. With fewer pebbles, the limestone layer rises to 40 cm, resulting in wines with greater tension, length and freshness. This trellised, early-ripening vineyard is 25 years old. Despite being younger than El Chivitero, Manuel says that it produces higher quality grapes, though this varies by vintage. In 2023, for example, the grapes were harvested in the middle of a heatwave, missing out on the refreshing rains that benefited El Chivitero, which is picked later.

Climate change is a growing concern for Manuel, particularly the trend toward earlier bud break and the shrinking harvest window. “It’s one thing to start harvesting on 20 September in mild conditions; it’s another to being in August under 42ºC heat,” he notes. Paradoxically, in 2022, the warmest vintage of the 21st century, vines shut down, resulting in a particularly long cycle with good acidity and the lowest alcohol levels in the winery's records.

Another key vineyard for Cantalapiedra, which lends its name to the winery's top wine, is La Otea in Villanueva de Duero. This hundred-year-old, ungrafted vineyard has been enveloped by the village’s urban expansion. Framed by a few pine trees and exposed to the influence of the Duero River, which flows barely 500 metres away, the vines grow on extremely poor, sandy soils. With meagre yields of just 500-600 kg per hectare due to their age and numerous losses, the vineyard is far from profitable. However, it produces highly concentrated grapes with very low pH, resulting in a complex, full-bodied white wine. Sandy soils tend to be more vulnerable to frost lacking the heat-retaining properties of stony terrain, yet Manuel considers them the most interesting for old vineyards.

Unlike Cantayano and Lirondo, where destemmed grapes are the norm, his single-vineyard wines are pressed with whole bunches, resulting in cleaner musts that do not need to be racked before ageing. All of Cantalapiedra’s whites undergo full malolactic fermentation. "We lose some acidity, but I think it helps to refine the rusticity of Verdejo and also allows us to bottle without filtering, giving the wines greater concentration and purity," explains Manuel.

A personal challenge

This year brings a major milestone for Manuel: the launch of his own range of wines. While still a small-scale project, it grants him full creative freedom outside the family winery. For now production remains limited as he works exclusively with his own vineyards, but his long-term vision includes establishing an independent facility –perhaps restoring one of the many underground cellars beneath La Seca.

Over the years, he has assembled two and a half hectares of ungrafted plots scattered across the villages of Hornillos de Eresma, Alcazarén and Olmedo, to the east of La Seca, as well as some old vineyards in La Seca itself.

The grapes from La Seca are used for Obertura (2,000 bottles in the first 2022 vintage, the name being a nod to his musical past) while those from Alcazarén go to Amansalobos (only 280 bottles in the first 2021 vintage). Although the wines share a similar philosophy, in this project he embraces lower intervention, and he is willing to release some wines without the addition of sulphites. Obertura is aged for a year in oak and six months in stainless steel, while Amansalobos spends two years in oak barrels. Manuel is actively searching for another vineyard in Alcazarén with similar characteristics to expand production. Frost poses a high risk in this area, but he values the presence of limestone materials washed down from the nearby plateau. The 2022 Obertura I tasted in the cellar displayed remarkable purity, concentration and length.

The project will also include red wines, particularly a very old Garnacha vineyard in Toro that Manuel is in the process of buying. Located in Villafranca del Duero, it has a very distinctive fruit character. Some of the wines from the family winery may eventually become part of his personal project.

Although few consumers are aware of it, Cantalapiedra Viticultores also produces a small range of reds from Toro sold under the VT Castilla y León seal as they are vinified in La Seca. The most widely available red is Arenisca (15,000 bottles, €15), alongside Lirondo, a clarete blend of Tinta de Toro and Verdejo. Manuel is now reassessing his reds, looking at ripening levels, alcohol content, harvest dates and, in general, the style that best reflects the character of an area where power is a standard feature.

While he refines reds, his whites remain a must for any serious Verdejo wine lover. From the seamless Cantayano to the undisputed La Otea, there is a wine for every palate. For anyone willing to venture further, Manuel's new solo venture promises an exciting evolution in his already distinctive winemaking journey.