Llámalo X

Llámalo X — "call it X, call it whatever you want" — is the opening statement of José Joaquín Ballesteros Catalán, an oenologist from Villarrobledo (Albacete) with family on both sides of the craft: his father's side are vine growers on the Castilian plateau; his mother's family were tinajeros — the clay vessel makers who made Villarrobledo the world's principal centre for wine amphora production for centuries, and whose vessels today serve producers like Foradori and COS. The project launched in 2021 with an explicit reversal of industry logic: recover what was being lost.

Finca Cañada del Predicador is around 15 hectares at 720–730 metres altitude on clay-limestone, sandy and stony soils, with goblet-trained vines between 30 and 90 years old. The variety roster is the real manifesto: Airén and Pardilla in white; Cencibel (a local Tempranillo clone), Monastrell, Crujidera (Moravia Dulce — a variety whose roots resist phylloxera, meaning the El Jaral vines grow ungrafted on their own roots) and Listán Prieto in red — the variety Spanish colonists carried to the Americas in the 16th century, today surviving on the peninsula in just a handful of vineyards. Each wine comes from a single variety and single parcel, with productions of 1,200 to 1,300 bottles.

Winemaking is minimal intervention throughout: spontaneous fermentation, gravity flow, no oak. The vessels are century-old clay tinajas from Villarrobledo — the same clay Foradori and COS seek out in Italy — inherited through the family. The Caminollano Airén Brisado Tinaja ferments for 60 days on skins; the AnceXtral is an Airén and Bobal ancestral-method clarete; the Proyecto L.P. (Listán Prieto) is the most singular bet in the range. Sobremesa named the Caminollano its wine of the week; the US importer is Polaner Selections, the portfolio that represents Foradori, COS and Radikon.