Gutiérrez de la Vega

Felipe Gutiérrez de la Vega and his wife Pilar settled in 1978 in a nineteenth-century farmhouse in Jávea, and began making wine in the old press room in its cellar. They later moved the winery to a former olive mill in Parcent, a mountain village in the Marina Alta, within DO Alicante.

The house works mainly with Muscat of Alexandria, the local moscatel romano. Felipe loves opera, and the wines show it: Casta Diva is Norma's aria, and Recondita Armonia is Tosca's.

Casta Diva Cosecha Miel comes from Muscat vines of about fifty years in Parcent, bush-trained and dry-farmed, on white calcareous marl. Ripe grapes are picked together with nearly half the fruit raisined on the vine, without botrytis; fermentation is stopped with grape spirit, leaving 145 grams of sugar, and it ages fifteen months in American, Hungarian, French and Caucasian oak and acacia.

La Diva ferments slowly in French oak and ages thirteen months in acacia.