Belondrade

Didier Belondrade, a Bordeaux native and Air France executive, tasted Verdejo almost by chance, through a friend, and set out to make with it a white for ageing from a native grape, fermented and aged in barrel the Burgundian way. He bought his first hectares in La Seca and the winery was set up in 1994 with his then wife, Brigitte Lurton, of the Bordeaux family of that name.

In the village, asking for the winery still gets the answer: "The French people's place? Yes, up there."

Today he runs the house with his son Jean Belondrade, and winemaker Marta Baquerizo has made the wines since 1999. Besides Belondrade y Lurton they make Quinta Apolonia, another Verdejo, and Quinta Clarisa, a Syrah and Tempranillo rosé.

Belondrade y Lurton comes from twenty-three plots of ten to seventy-five years, at about 750 metres, on a layer of rounded stones ten to sixty centimetres deep, with clay below and limestone further down. It ferments spontaneously and ages on its lees in French oak.