Victoria Ordóñez

Victoria Ordóñez is a medical doctor with a PhD in Medicine who worked in biomedical research. Her father, José María Ordóñez, was a leading fine-wine distributor in Málaga. She began working part-time with the Austrian Alois Kracher in Málaga vineyards and, when he died in 2007, turned to wine full time. In 2015 she opened Victoria Ordóñez e Hijos, by the airport.

Her bet is the Montes de Málaga, the steep ranges north of the city. They were under vine when Málaga wine was famous across Europe, but after phylloxera they were reforested and the wine was forgotten. Since 2015 the winery has been tracking down the old Pedro Ximénez vines that survived.

The plots lie between 800 and 1,000 metres, inside the natural park, unterraced, on slopes of 46 to 76%, where the grapes come down by donkey. The youngest vines are fifty years old and most are ninety to a hundred, yielding under two thousand kilos per hectare.

Her first wine was La Ola del Melillero, a dry Pedro Ximénez white with a touch of Moscatel, named after the swell raised by the ferry between Málaga and Melilla. Las Olas del Melillero is her sparkling rosé.