Dominio del Águila

Jorge Monzón and his wife, the architect Isabel Rodero, founded Dominio del Águila in 2010 at La Aguilera, the Ribera del Duero village where his family has grown grapes for generations. Jorge trained in Bordeaux and Burgundy, worked at Domaine de la Romanée-Conti and in the Vega Sicilia group, and was technical director at Arzuaga for nine vintages, until 2013, when he turned to his own estate full time.

While at Arzuaga he kept buying old vineyards that were about to be grubbed up and replanted with more productive Tempranillo clones and international varieties: old massal selections of Tempranillo interplanted with other varieties, many of them white. He farms them organically.

The winery lies beneath the village. Isabel led the restoration of fifteenth-century cellars dug into the rock, where the barrels age; the concrete tanks sit in the coldest part.

The Reserva comes from some of the oldest vines in La Aguilera, at about 880 metres, on red clay with some limestone: Tempranillo with Garnacha, Bobal and Blanca del País. The bunches go in without destemming into concrete tanks, where they are trodden by foot; malolactic happens naturally in small oak vats and ageing lasts 35 months.