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The windmill blades turn leisurely in La Mancha.
But appearances are deceptive: Iberia's most prestigious wines now come from the heart of Spain.

"Take a cushion with you, the chairs are hard", the woman at the reception recommends. The chairs she is referring to are in the patio of the Corral de Comedias. That's the name of the theatre in the small town of Almagro, 30 kilometres west of Valdepeñas. A real classical theatre, three storeys high, one of the oldest in Spain, but so tiny, as if it had shrunk into a puppet stage over the years. You can hear the actors' breathing. They are playing "Life is a Dream" by Calderón de la Barca. And the dream continues after the event ends, when the moon falls on cobblestones and mansions and you enter the magnificent Plaza Mayor with its arcades and balustrades.

Those who believe that wine has created the wealth of this city are mistaken. The wines from La Mancha and Valdepeñas were sold too cheaply for that. No, Almagro was the headquarters of the powerful Calatrava knights in the Middle Ages. Then, in the 16th century, the Augsburg banking house of Fugger took control of the nearby mercury mine and made Almagro one of the most important trading and financial centres in southwestern Europe. Gone. Today, Almagro is a sleepy provincial town, only allowed to be a cosmopolitan city for a few days at the end of July, during the theatre festival.

"34 bold warriors"

Windmills in Campo de Criptana
La Mancha is barren, dust-dry and windswept. Sometimes barren. Sometimes fantastically beautiful. You just have to know where. If you drive south from Madrid, you will come across the picture-book village of Campo de Criptana about 40 kilometres before Valdepeñas. High above the village towers a tower of windmills. Are they the ones the legendary Don Quixote wrestled with? Miguel de Cervantes wrote in his novel of "34 bold knights" whom the knight courageously opposes. Ten mills remain and are now listed monuments.

In their shadow, so to speak, one of the new wine fairy tales of southern La Mancha is underway. Alejandro Fernández, the famous winemaker of the Pesquera winery in Ribera del Duero, has built the bodega El Vínculo here. In the taverns of the village, the winegrowers know an anecdote about "Don Alejandro". In his first year in La Mancha, he discovered a vineyard with old vines that bore very few grapes. Because he wanted these grapes so badly, he paid the winegrower more than twice the usual price. The next year, the winegrower came back to Alejandro to offer him three times the amount of the same vineyard for the same price. But Alejandro smilingly refused, whereupon the winegrower had to sell the grapes in question to the cooperative at the minimum price. Understanding quality can sometimes be painful

A stone's throw from the bodega El Vínculo is the restaurant "Cueva La Martina", which serves an excellent Pisto Manchego, a vegetable stew made from tomatoes and peppers. Large windows offer a view of the typical Mancha village.

Export success Clarete

The sea of vines south of Madrid is a strange entity. If you look at the map of Spanish D.O. regions, you will notice that the huge appellation of La Mancha almost completely surrounds the relatively small D.O. of Valdepeñas with its 30000 hectares. Valdepeñas almost completely. So why this distinction? For one thing, the pot-flat meseta changes into gentle hilly country shortly before the small town of Valdepeñas. But even more important is that the winegrowers around Valdepeñas succeeded much earlier in giving their wine a certain reputation.

The largest contiguous wine-growing area in the world

As early as the 16th century, it was "in" to drink wine from Valdepeñas in Madrid's leading inns. And in the 19th century, the small region even landed a spectacular export success with its Clarete. The light red wine got its drinkable character because the winegrowers diluted their strong red wines by adding 20 percent white wine. Especially in South America, Clarete was extremely popular.

Despite their different levels of success, the wines from the D.O. regions of La Mancha and Valdepeñas have always been very similar in the area of unpretentiously produced mass wines. And today, when a small group of ambitious winemakers has made a name for itself in various places on the Castilian plateau, it is evident that the top wines from both appellations are also closely related. No wonder: the winemakers cultivate the same grape varieties, namely Cabernet Sauvignon, Merlot and Syrah in addition to the long-established Cencibel (Tempranillo). The terroir with its chalk subsoil and continental climate is also comparable. And here, as there, they know all about modern cellar technology and barrique ageing today.

The result is a completely new style of wine. Many red wines appear decidedly modern with their fruit-driven, ripe opulence. With their black berry fruit, buffered by abundant oak spice, they are sometimes strongly reminiscent of New World wines. One could almost believe that Australia begins south of Madrid.

The top of the pyramid

Top wine from La Mancha: El Vínculo
Among the pioneers in the D.O. La Mancha are Miguel and José María Calatayud, but above all the former Madrid theatre producer Manuel Manzaneque. At his Finca Elez in El Bonillo, he presses one of the prestigious Vinos de Pago. Today, these wines from classified single vineyards form the top of the Spanish appellation pyramid, and it is certainly no coincidence that it is not a traditional Cencibel, but a Syrah.

In Valdepeñas, the inconspicuous street town, it is above all Dionisio de Nova García who is breaking new ground. His father converted the 29-hectare estate to organic farming 20 years ago, which this dry region with little more than 400 millimetres of rain per year and square metre would actually be predestined for. Nevertheless, he has hardly found any imitators to this day. Vinum Vitae, the organic winemaker's top cuvée, consists of Tempranillo and Cabernet Sauvignon. But he also experiments with Petit Verdot and Syrah. And in the cellar of his typical whitewashed manor house with patio, he has set up a special room where he makes garlic vinegar.

Organic winemaker Dionisio de Nova García relies on barriques and tinajas

Despite their love of experimentation, the winemakers also remain faithful to tradition. Nothing shows this as clearly as the "tinajas", the clay amphorae in which the fathers of today's winegrowers fermented and matured their wines. They still stand in the cellars and are not only carefully cared for, but also used.

Saffron, garlic and vines

Although the Meseta south of Madrid is the largest contiguous wine region in the world, the landscape is not only dominated by the idiosyncratically chequered vineyards. In October, individual fields suddenly glow violet-blue. Then it is time to harvest the most expensive spice in the world: saffron

A bad place for vampires: garlic soup from Castile
Moreover, La Mancha is a stronghold of garlic cultivation. Garlic is omnipresent in the simple taverns. Especially in autumn. Then there is not only garlic soup, but also mushrooms and various game are prepared with garlic. But don't worry: cooks and housewives alike know how to handle the bulbs in such a way that negative after-effects are largely absent.

La Mancha is a rustic region that lives almost entirely from agriculture. Perhaps it is because of its barrenness that people still equate this land with Don Quixote. Here, where the sun burns so brutally on the flat land that a mirage can sometimes appear, the confused character of the novel's character becomes more understandable.

Incidentally, Cervantes also had his sad knight fight with wine. At that time, "pellejos" were used to transport wine, skins of goats sewn together and filled with wine to give them an animal-like appearance. When Don Quixote encountered such a thing, he mistook it for an enemy and took up the fight with his lance. When he saw the wine pouring out, which he naturally thought was blood, he was sure he had won a glorious victory. With today's barriques, he probably wouldn't have had such an easy time of it


Text: Thomas Vaterlaus (thomas.vaterlaus@vinum.info)
Photos: Heinz Hebeisen (heinz.hebeisen@vinum.info)

Tested for you

Restaurants:

El Corregidor


Jerónimo Ceballos 2E-13270
Almagro (Ciudad Real)
Tel. +34-926-86 06 48
elcorregidor@teleline.es
Old house with a rustic interior and cuisine that skilfully refines classic dishes



.

La Membrilleja
Carretera de Pozuelo a Torralba, km 5E-13270
Almagro (Ciudad Real)
Tel. +34-926-69 30 64Classic
inn in a typical 19th century courtyard with patio


.

Las Rejas
Borreros 49E-16660
Las Pedroñeras (Cuenca)
Tel. +34-967-16 10 89
informacion@lasrejas.net

www.lasrejas.netDas Dignified restaurant in a former mansion worth the diversions, as do the dishes by top chef Manolo de la Osa




.

Cueva La Martina
Rocinante 13E-13610
Campo de Criptana
(Ciudad Real)
Tel +34-926-56 14 76Dine
among windmills with views of a typical Mancha village - Don Quixote sends his regards



.

Hotels

Parador de Turismo Almagro
Ronda de San Francisco 31E-13270
Almagro (Ciudad Real)
Tel +34-926-86 01 00Fax
+34-926-86 01 50
almagro@parador.es

www.paradores-spain.comGehört One of the most beautiful paradores in all of Spain. Housed in a 16th-century convent with numerous patios.





Balneario Cervantes
(Hotel with restaurant
)Camino de los Molinos, km 2E-13730
Santa Cruz de Mudela
(14 km from Valdepeñas)
Tel. +34-926-33 13 13Fax
+34-926-33 14 41
balneariocervantes@manchanet.es

www.balneariocervantes.comKlassisches Country hotel with all comforts (swimming pool, etc.)







.

More information

www.lamanchado.es
Rich website with a wealth of information about the D.O.
La Mancha, the largest winegrowing region in the world.

www.
wein-plus.de/spanienKompakte Info about the


D.O.


Valdepeñas.

www.
ayto-valdepenas.orgGut Website about
viticulture, sights and gastronomy in Valdepeñas



.



Unfortunately only in Spanish.








The above article was kindly made available to us by the Vinum editorial team. Many thanks for this. Please use the following link to order a free sample issue of Vinum:

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