Bodegas Fontana Cuvée Celadón Uclés 2025
£10.75
The wine
A crisp, lively and unoaked blend defined by clarity and precision. Aromas of citrus, fresh grass and subtle exotic fruit are expressive yet restrained. The finish is lingering and dry, with a distinctive mineral backbone from the high-altitude vineyards.
Celadon is a pale green-grey pigment, and the Cuvee wines are all named after colours. Verdejo with Sauvignon Blanc is a Spanish white pairing that works because the two are aromatically similar: Verdejo brings fennel and bitter almond, Sauvignon the citrus and cut. Ucles sits at 700 to 900 metres, which is what keeps them fresh.
The producer
Bodegas Fontana
View all Bodegas Fontana winesBodegas Fontana farm at Ucles, a small appellation in Castilla-La Mancha south-east of Madrid, created only in 2006 and covering the high country around the town of the same name.
Castilla-La Mancha is the largest continuous vineyard area on earth, and most of it produces wine in enormous volume from the flat, hot plain. Ucles is the exception: the vineyards climb the slopes of the Altomira range at 700 to 900 metres, where nights are genuinely cold and the growing season is long. The town is dominated by a monastery-fortress that was the headquarters of the Order of Santiago, one of the great military orders of the reconquest.
The estate works Tempranillo and Garnacha alongside Syrah, Verdejo and Sauvignon Blanc, and the Cuvee wines are named after pigments: Celadon, Cobalto, Alizarina. Altitude is what makes them possible, and Ucles remains far less known than it deserves.
