Ricardo Velasco, winemaker and technical director of Bodegas y Viñedos Valtravieso helps us to get to know this new plot wine that has already become one of our favorites. Discover it in this article!

  1. Valdelobas is one of the best ambassadors of the limestone and altitude that characterize the Ribera del Duero wasteland where Valtravieso is located. It is a single varietal wine, made with Tempranillo grapes from a selection of the most limestone areas of the “Valdelobas” plot of our “La Revilla” estate, whose vineyards are not the oldest, but have an average age of 15 years and low yields. “We are not looking for concentration in the field, but for balance,” explains Ricardo Velasco.
  2. It is a wine that speaks of the terroir in which it is born, in which the type of aging is also chosen for that purpose. “With this wine we want to convey the importance of terroir, how it makes a wine unique, because the place where the grapes we make it from are born and grow has a great influence,” explains Ricardo Velasco. “To be as precise as possible in capturing that terroir, we have reduced the percentage of new barrels or small barrels and we are vinifying in large barrels and extending the aging in 2,000 or 3,000 liter foudres because what we want is to express the limestone as clearly as possible without the influence of new barrels.”
  3. This wine is an oxymoron in Ribera del Duero, a singular wine, far removed from the style we know in the area: it is a Ribera de páramo because Valtravieso is located in one of the freshest and finest areas of the Designation of Origin, which is very different from the more clayey or sandy soils of the valley floor. “In Valdelobas we dare to represent a finer, deeper, more elegant, more subtle Ribera, not so exuberant, not so forceful.”
  4. It is a limited production wine (about 3,500 bottles) with great aging potential. “We don’t want to please everyone, but to express what we can do in Valtravieso in the most radical way”.
  5. Valdelobas de Valtravieso is a wine that will become part of the winery’s permanent catalog but will not be made every year, only those that are excellent. “In 2022, for example, we did not make it because it was a warmer and more solar year, we did not like the balance the wine had.”
  6. It is a wine in which limestone is present from the nose to the mouth. “They are not fruity and exuberant aromas but it has a floral point, a violet point on the nose along with more complex notes of undergrowth: it’s like a walk through a damp forest or wet limestone aroma, like that olfactory sensation that entering a cathedral generates in you.”
  7. “In the mouth, it is a wine with freshness and depth. “The palate is fluid due to the limestone and altitude origin of the grapes: the limestone provides a more reactive tannin that melts, which reacts when you have drunk it and lengthens it in a pleasant way, without astringency. It is an aromatic tannin, which remains more in the aftertaste than in the tactile sensation in the mouth”.
  8. To pair it, gastronomically speaking, Ricardo Velasco recommends pairing it with the most winter dishes from the tasting menu of La Barra del Indiano, such as the pigeon lollipop, the artichoke stuffed with suckling lamb or the lasagna of its capons (raised in Tudela de Duero, Castilian hen meat and Bresse rooster). And, for those who are not near Valladolid or prefer to cook at home, it is ideal to accompany cured cheeses, game dishes or stews such as roast suckling pig or suckling lamb and grilled red meats. Cheers!