Blanquizal 2023 | Miguel Castro Maíllo | Montilla Moriles

Miguel Castro Maíllo grew up among the vineyards of the Sierra de Montilla but chose to study Enology in Cádiz and train in the Marco de Jerez before returning to his family's land. His project, launched in 2018, is built on one simple, radical idea: to prove that Pedro Ximénez — the iconic variety of Montilla-Moriles, reduced for decades to raisins and sweet wine — can produce precise, age-worthy dry whites.

The stage is Cerro Macho, a ridge that splits the Sierra de Montilla into two albariza-clad slopes — that white, porous, cooling limestone that stores winter moisture and releases it slowly through the summer drought. To the east, Riofrío Alto, shaded in the afternoon: tighter, more saline wines with marked acidity. To the west, Benavente Alto, open to the sun: broader, more vinous in character. Each parcel ferments and ages separately in old Fino barrels, on its lees and under a veil of flor, until the following harvest. The vines are fifty to sixty years old and are pruned in the traditional ojo y coíllo style: the ojo is the productive bud for the current year, the coíllo the spur that will yield next year's shoot.

The wines bear no resemblance to the export-sweet of the past: taut, mineral, with a lees texture and a salinity that speak of the inland sea Andalucía once was. Small production — very small.