Wine & Spirits - August 2018 - 41

Germán Blanco (left) and José Luis
Herrero, partners in Quinta Milú
the vineyards on his bicycle and, at harvest time, he
also liked to taste the grapes and work in the fields.
In 2003 he went to study viticulture and oenology in
Bordeaux, and after passing through Napa and South
Africa, he returned to Ribera del Duero in 2009, when
he had just turned 25 years old.
Dominio de Basconcillos hired him as its winemaker, and he worked there until the beginning of
2018. "I worked 14 hours a day, and then I came to
see my vineyards," he says, as we arrive at Las Dueñas, a 2.5-acre parcel located near the small town of
Anguix, about five kilometers north of Roa.
Barona walks through the thick, twisted vines with
the pride of someone who has worked hard to earn
what he has, a collection of old vineyards totaling 80
acres, all within Burgos. He sells most of these grapes,
keeping 12 acres since 2014 for his own project, which
bears his name. Of all his vineyards, Las Dueñas is
his favorite. "Do you know when it was planted?" he
asks, leaning against one of the vines. "It was planted
in 1908. I've known this vineyard since I was fifteen
years old and I always liked the grapes here. It has had
one hundred and ten vintages. Can you believe it?"
Barona believes that tinto fino is a great grape, but
that it needs other varieties to complement it. "With
this heat, tinto fino loses a lot of acidity. To remedy
this, it is usual to add tartaric acid. But I do not like
that. Before I'm a producer, I'm a wine drinker. And
that acid bothers me."
He estimates that Las Dueñas is 80 percent tinto
fino, and there is also bobal, garnacha, monastrell
and albillo. "All these grapes bring freshness, complexity and acidity." His first harvest at Las Dueñas,
in 2014, produced only 850 bottles. "What do you
think?" he asks, while I savor this concentrated and
intense wine, pungent in its acidity, ideal refreshment
with the tender, juicy baby lamb chops that Barona
has just taken off the grill. "Can we have another bottle?" I answer.

"La Aguilera is a
winegrowing town-
almost everyone
is dedicated to the
vineyard, works
there every day.
In Spain this is
increasingly rare."
-Germán Blanco

TINTO FINO WITH ITS OWN LIGHT
Germán Blanco and José Luis Herrero have been
friends since their student days. And, as partners in
Quinta Milú, they could not be more different.
Blanco, born in Asturias, is the talkative one. He
travels from one place to another, making wines from
Rioja to Bierzo, passing through Ribera del Duero. He
does not stop and has the vital and active personality
of someone who does not like to stop, ever.
Herrero, also known as el niño (the boy), is withdrawn and somewhat surly, a man of few words. He
was born in Aguilera, to a family of winegrowers, and
has stayed there, convinced of the potential of the
old vines of tinto fino he has tended for as long as he
can remember.
Determined to shift over from grapegrowers to
winemakers, Herrero and his father built a winery in
La Aguilera. In 2008, Blanco joined them. "That was
our first vintage, one of the worst I remember. We
could barely produce something like eight thousand
bottles," Blanco tells me, while Herrero nods sternly.
As of 2012, they decided to stop selling grapes and
keep everything for Milú. Today the winery produces
80,000 bottles and focuses solely on tinto fino growing in La Aguilera, which, both partners agree, has
a special flavor. "Before Milú," Blanco tells me, "I
had worked in Ribera wineries and I always liked the
grapes from this place. In a way, all the roads always
ended here, in one of the highest and freshest areas of
Ribera del Duero," he adds, and Herrero nods again.
The Milú project encompasses 70 acres of vines
around the town, most of them very old, some more
than 100 years old, distributed among 27 plots.
Blanco and Herrero vinify the fruit from each plot
separately, then bottle a total of seven wines. Their
range starts with Milú, a kind of village wine produced from young vines, and rises to single-vineyard
bottlings such as Milú Valdevicente, which comes
from a three-quarter-acre parcel planted more than
WINE & SPIRITS

AUGUST 2018

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