Celler del Roure Les Prunes 2024
£17.25
The wine
A reference to the smell of not-quite-ripe wild plums on a summer evening. Refreshingly bone-dry.
The high inland Valencia is limestone at altitude with cold nights, and a set of native varieties that survived because the region was written off as bulk country. Mandó, Arcos and Verdil grow almost nowhere else. Celler del Roure farm 65 hectares of certified organic vineyard at 600 metres in Valencia, and age much of their wine in buried clay tinajas recovered from a fifteenth-century cellar on the estate.
The producer
Celler del Roure
View all Celler del Roure winesIn the hills of Les Alcusses, deep in the Valencian interior, Celler del Roure has become one of Spain's most exciting estates by looking to the past. Reviving near-extinct native grapes and an ancient cellar of buried clay amphorae, the estate makes wines quite unlike any others. It is a place where old ways feel thrillingly new.
Mandó, Arcos and a host of forgotten local varieties are farmed with care and vinified with minimal intervention. The old underground tinajas lend the wines a startling freshness, texture and transparency, red and white alike.
Singular, mineral and full of soul, these are wines that reward the curious and the open-minded. They offer a taste of a Mediterranean that most drinkers have never met.
Serve the reds with a slight chill and the whites well chilled, and taste a lost corner of Spain brought vividly back to life.
