Our final winery visit during our day in Ronda was to Bodega Los Bujeos, a small winery that is integrated into the beautiful rural hotel, El Juncal, just outside the town of Ronda.  El Juncal belongs to the same family that owns one of the most famous restaurants in Ronda:  Tragabuches.  The project was conceived as a dual project from the being:  a luxury rural hotel that offers a serene escape from the stresses of modern life and a small, artesanal winery that could produce some top notch wines. Lola Jimenez, the owner, was totally honest with us when she admitted that the hotel part was conceived in order to help finance the winery part…we all know how long it takes to make a profit form a winery!  Whatever the original intention, the result is spectacular…escapist luxury accommodations amongst the beauty of the vineyards! 

The second winery we visited is Descalzos Viejos, a traditional moniker literally meaning “old unshoed ones”, which was a common name for certain orders of monks.  The winery is housed in the church and grounds of the old monastery. The site was completely abandoned when 2 architects from Ronda acquired it and restored it.  The nave of the 500 year old chapel is a unique and charming setting for the winery’s fermentation room! 

One very impressive winery in Ronda is Cortijo Los Aguilares, the personal retirement project of a Basque businessman, José Antonio Itarte.  The estate is a huge finca and the vineyards only cover some 19 hectares of the total 800 available…wine here is made on a very artisanal basis…after extensive soil analysis only the best parcels were planted with vines!  Also on the estate are free-range Iberian black pigs…we saw them running through the oak trees from a distance.  The winery itself has two buildings, both of which were restored respecting the original architecture of the Cortijo; the elegant main house is mostly a vacation home for the family but also houses the administrative offices and a beautiful tasting space.  The winemaking area is housed in a much more functional building with a shallow lake on the roof to help with cooling the barrel room.  The young enologist, Bibi García, is very dynamic and she is striving to make a very different style wine than is typical in the area.  She gained experience working in Rioja, Priorat and Chile.  The owner is greatly influenced by the wines of Burgundy and Bibi is trying to create elegant, aromatic wines that seem to defy the sometimes extreme heat of the region.  These wines do in fact have an earthy complexity reminiscent of Burgundy and are surprisingly light in alcohol. 

As mentioned in my article below on Navarra Wine Country, we recently had the chance to visit an impressive new winery project near Estella in Navarra: Pago de Larrainzar.

The project is the vision of Miguel Canalejo Larrainzar, the former president of Alcatel in Spain. It is a real family project: a couple of his children are involved full-time in the winery.