Wineries
Beronia
Beronia Rueda
In our new Beronia Rueda winery technology and architecture have brought together steel and soil, concrete and grapes, and glass and air in perfect harmony and balance. Beronia Rueda has 65 hectares of its own vineyards divided between two plantations (El Torrejón and La Perdiz) that have been growing Verdejo since 2016.
Finca El Torrejón has very interesting soil as it contains a high proportion of alluvial deposit from the Duero river and, especially, veins of lime which give the wine considerable minerality. The entire vineyard has been divided into sections to make the most of the different soil types and variations in exposure to the sun due to the slopes. Finca La Perdiz, which is where the winery has been built, covers 25 hectares and has three types of trellis system. Each benefits the plants and the fruit in different ways (lengthening or shortening the growth cycle, promoting optimum plant health…), the aim being to produce highly expressive wines.
Prize Winning
Verdejo Beronia Rueda is currently making just one wine, from two harvests: an earlier one that produces a fresher wine with more herbaceous aromas, with touches of boxwood, grass and fennel; and a second that starts a few days later and collects riper grapes that offer up stone fruit and other, more exotic fruits. The wine is thus a coupage, or blend, of a single variety at two stages of ripeness that reflects the particular traits of the different areas of the vineyard, the ripeness of the grapes and elements of the winery as well: the types of materials used in making the wine.
Beronia Rueda’s Verdejo is fermented in stainless steel and in concrete tanks. (Next year the winery will also use an oak foudre). The stainless steel gives the fresh fruit characteristics whilst the cement produces warmer and denser wines as a result of the greater lees contact. With the concrete, we are focusing on the palate, whilst with the stainless steel the focus is on the fruit. Beronia Rueda 2016 has become one of the Designation of Origin’s most lauded Verdejos of the year, having won Gold Medal at the Concours Mondial de Bruxelles and the 2016 Vintage Bacchus award. The double success achieved by this year’s wine in two of the great competitions makes Beronia Rueda one of the Spanish winemaking industry’s benchmark Verdejos.
A Sustainable Winery
The starting point for the design of the winery was that it should be sustainable. Its thick concrete walls and the fact that the areas where the wine is actually made are semi-underground, being five metres below ground level, mean that there is low thermal inertia between the outside and the inside of the winery. As a result, due to the lower heat flux, the temperature inside this part of the winery remains constant – a valuable asset when it comes to storing and keeping white wines. Viticulture at Beronia Rueda is rational. “Because of the climate here, you could almost be working organically without actually trying, because this is a very special area,” explains Beronia Rueda’s winemaker, Marián Santamaría.
The Wine
Beronia Rueda 2017 is pale yellow in colour with greenish tints. Intensely aromatic, it displays notes of citrus and white fruit along with herbaceous aromas that are typical of the grape variety, such as fennel. Richly textured on the palate, it is fresh and elegant, with a slight touch of bitterness on the finish, also characteristic of the Verdejo grape. An ideal accompaniment for all sorts of fish dishes, as well as for lean white meat. Pasta, rice and cheese also pair well with this wine. Find more information about this wine here.
