The Story
Without this vineyard, Verdejo might not be here at all. In the 1970s, as growers across Rueda ripped out shy-bearing Verdejo for higher-yielding Viura and Palomino, Angel Rodriguez refused to touch his family's 17th-century Martinsancho plot in La Seca. In 1976 he regrafted his best land using its cuttings, and that original scrap of gnarled, pre-phylloxera vines still stands, still supplying nurseries across Europe with the real thing. Spain eventually pinned a civil honor on him for it. The wine itself makes the case better than the story does: this is Verdejo with texture and salt and bite, not just a squeeze of citrus.
Description
Without this vineyard, Verdejo might not be here at all. In the 1970s, as growers across Rueda ripped out shy-bearing Verdejo for higher-yielding Viura and Palomino, Angel Rodriguez refused to touch his family's 17th-century Martinsancho plot in La Seca. In 1976 he regrafted his best land using its cuttings, and that original scrap of gnarled, pre-phylloxera vines still stands, still supplying nurseries across Europe with the real thing. Spain eventually pinned a civil honor on him for it. The wine itself makes the case better than the story does: this is Verdejo with texture and salt and bite, not just a squeeze of citrus.
