The fourth generation of a family from Santander, Primitivo "Primi" Collantes is in charge of this winery in Chiclana de la Frontera, a town that traditionally used to supply wine and grapes to the main bodegas in Jerez but whose vineyard area has been drastically reduced (139 hectares today compared to 3,725 in 1892).
As Chiclana is a production area and not an ageing area - only Jerez, Sanlúcar and El Puerto are in this category - the labels of the well over 215,000 bottles produced by Collantes cannot display the words Xeres-Jerez-Sherry, but they produce all the styles of the area, from the new unfortified white wines (still outside the DO) to sweet, biological and oxidatively aged wines.
Until the 1990s, the Collantes family sold some of their musts to other wineries, but the 39 hectares under vine that they own in the village are used exclusively for their own range of wines.
Finca Matalian is the main vineyard, a spectacular property on the outskirts of Chiclana overlooking the Bay of Cadiz. Thanks to its altitude, the climate is a little cooler than elsewhere in the Sherry region and the Levante and Poniente winds delay ripening. "In Chiclana the harvest begins at the start of September whereas by that time the rest of the region has more or less finished picking grapes," explains Primi. "That's why coastal wines are different from those sourced from inland vineyards in the region".
In these 20 hectares, including six planted recently, Collantes grows Palomino, Moscatel and Uva Rey. The latter was a popular variety in Chiclana - the winery made a 100% Uva Rey wine in 1974 - but the arrival of phylloxera meant that less productive varieties were replaced by the Palomino california clone. " Nowadays, grapes are paid per kilo and Uva Rey yields no more than 6,000 or 7,000kg/Ha. In addition, it is harvested in October or even November and requires the press to be open for two months, with the costs that this entails", explains Collantes, who describes this variety as "robust and racy, with citrus notes and a pleasant palate". He makes a wine with Uva ey that "veers towards oxidation" and he hopes to release around 1,000 bottles by the end of 2020.
The flagship wines of Primitivo Collantes come from the Matalian estate, such as Fino Arroyuelo (32,000 bottles, €7.50) with more than five years of biological ageing, Fino Arroyuelo en Rama, a saline wine drawn directly from selected casks of the solera (12.000 bottles, €19.50) and Amontillado Fino Fossi (15,000 bottles, €11), whose casks are topped up with wine from the criaderas of Arroyuelo and is undoubtedly one of the amontillados with the best price-pleasure ratio in Sherry country.
Moscatel Viejo Los Cuartillos (25.000 bottles, €8.25), balanced and with good intensity without being cloying, also comes from the same vineyard. Collantes has two hectares of Muscat a Petit Grains there - the traditional muscat in the area - but he plans to plant a further two and a half hectares to meet the existing demand. "It is a seasonal demand", says Collantes, "but Moscatel is the bodega's second best-selling wine behind Fino Arroyuelo.
The albariza soils of this beautiful vineyard are also the origin of Matalian (15,000 bottles, €8), two young white Palomino-based wines with white stone fruit aromas and fleshy fruit in dry and semi-sweet versions, and Socaire (2,500 bottles, €16), a white wine that was born of the desire to assert the character of the Palomino variety without the need of adding alcohol or a veil of yeasts. Fermented in cask, in the traditional way, and aged for 24 months without flor, it is bottled as Vino de la Tierra de Cádiz since 2016. In the spring of 2019, Socaire Oxidativo (900 bottles, €29) was also released. It comes from four butts of the first Socaire that were set aside to allow the oxidative character of the wine to slowly emerge.
Crossing a path called Camino del Fontanal next to Finca Matalian you reach Pozo Galván, another large vineyard owned by Primitivo Collantes in Chiclana. There are 19 hectares with albariza soils combined with streaks of reddish earth called lustrillo. Although this soil has the same water retention capacity as the albariza, it has a higher percentage of iron.
Pozo Galván, planted entirely with Palomino, is the source of wines with no more than three years of age. They are mostly Finos with a light biological ageing that are sold in the winery's store and in neighbouring towns for everyday use.
At both Pozo Galván and Finca Matalian, all the work including harvesting is done by hand, which is increasingly rare in Jerez. Collantes's goal is differentiation through classification and yields that seek quality.
While recovering old production styles such as Socaire or historical varieties such as Uva Rey, Collantes has maintained both the original winery on Calle Ancha, where the offices, the press and the production area are located, and the ageing winery, in a lower part of the village next to the river. In the latter, housing the soleras and criaderas of Fino Arroyuelo, there is still a small cooperage, in which a worker repairs the casks in an artisan way.
The Collantes family sell 40% of their production in Chiclana, both in the office in Calle Ancha and in the tavern next to the ageing cellar, but they are gradually also opening new markets abroad.