Cesar Marquez, La Salvacion 2020

Grapes come from a single south facing plot in the Villafranca del Bierzo municipality. Soils are clay and sandy. The vines are over one hundred years old, the Godello is interplanted with Mencia. The old vines produce small bunches that mature up to two weeks before younger vines. The climate here is continental with a slight Atlantic influence. Grapes are destemmed and cold macerated for 24 hours. After pressing the must is allowed to cold settle for another 24 hours before transferring to 500 litre
barrels for fermentation with natural yeasts. The wine spends a year maturing in the same barrels. The wine isn’t topped up during this time allowing a flor to form on the wine for the last few months of the maturation. The wine is lightly fined with Bentonite and is bottled without filtration. 

Young winemaker Cesar Marquez has deep family roots in the Bierzo region. His introduction to winemaking was via uncle Raul (Perez). And as an apprenticeship has worked in the family wineries, and spent time in Mendoza with the Michelini brothers. For his own project, started in 2015, he is exploring the possibilities of a Burgundy-inspired classification system in Bierzo. He works a number of parcels of over 100 year old bush vines around Valtuille de Abajo. The winemaking in all his reds is quite similar, aiming to express the origin of the grapes over the winemaking process.