Source: Classical Wines of Spain
BODEGAS GORMAZ
Ribera del Duero, Spain
Modern winemaking facility controlling the majority of vineyard acreage in Ribera del Duero’s upriver province of Soria. Soria retains the region’s highest remaining percentage of old, head-pruned Tempranillo vines, often ungrafted. Winemaking focus is upon complex, elegant albeit unoaked red wine with ample structure and minerality.
Originating as principal regional cooperative, Bodegas Gormaz was among the sixteen founding members of Ribera del Duero in 1982. Privatized in 2004, contracts are maintained to control over 1300 acres of vines in Ribera Del Duero's eastern subdistrict of Soria. The highest and least exploited of the subdistricutes, remaining just outside the focus of commercial development, Soria retains the highest remaining percentage of old 'head-pruned' Tempranillo. The vines, typically 50 years of age or older, have been commonly allowed to propagate in the prephylloxeric 'promiscuous' manner, enabling an ungrafted adaptation to the terroir of rocky limestone at elevations above 3000 feet.
In former times, Soria was known for its claretes (dry rose), resulting from a mixture of red and white grapes. Now the Tempranillo is separated from the white varieties, and the old-vine reds can be equal in strucuture and power to those from Penafiel, Pesquera de Duero or Roa.