I was met by Eva Matute, the winery’s public relations person, who was very charming and knew a lot about wine.

The entrance to the winery is really nice. There’s nothing like a winery set in the middle of its vineyards. That alone says something about the winery.

Bodegas Marqués de Vargas is in an area called “Los 3 Marqueses”, namely Marqués de Murrieta, Marqués de Vargas and Marqués de Romeral.

The winery group owns another two wineries: Bodegas y Viñedos Conde de San Cristóbal (in Peñafiel, Ribera de Duero), and Bodega Pazo de San Mauro in Galicia.

Into the building; it’s an elegant building and very tastefully decorated. The walls are covered by paintings of the different owners of the winery since 1840, ie 170 years ago when the eighth Marqués de Vargas began making wine! The winery has passed down from father to son until today, when it’s owned by the thirteenth marquess, Pelayo de la Mata. The winery building in which I’m standing now was built in 1989.

From the main hall of the winery you can see straight into the barrel room through glass panels. The stained glass and the illumination combine to create a spectacular effect.

Eva then takes me to the vineyards. The garden through which we walk is very well cared for. Each blade of grass of the lawn has been mown to the millimeter. The impression is one of elegance, class, good taste, quality, perfectionism.
 

The winery makes three types of products: Marqués de Vargas Reserva, Marqués de Vargas Reserva Privada and Hacienda Prado Lagar. The latter two are only made in years when the grapes are of an exceptional quality.

We approach the vineyard; the vines are exuberant.

The winery exclusively uses grapes from its own vineyards. They have 70 hectares and the vines are mostly between 40 and 50 years old approximately.

At Marqués de Vargas they are focused on producing a very high quality product, even though the cost of doing so is significant. Eva tells me that the most important quality control process starts in the vineyard. Generally they only harvest about 4,000 to 4,500 kg per hectare, as opposed to the 6,500 kg permitted by the Denominación de Origen.

During the year they do many different jobs in the vineyard to assure themselves of the quality of the grapes. The main activities are: pruning in winter, green pruning in may and cluster thinning in August.

The 70 hectares are divided into 16 different plots, and are further subdivided by varieties, including Tempranillo, Graciano, Mazuelo and Garnacha. The harvesting is done by hand using 15 kg crates.

In the grape reception area of the winery we saw the hoppers and tanks. They were spotlessly clean. The installations in general were perfect for extracting quality must.

Eva told me that they were the first winery to use a hydraulic cap-puncher, a 3-ton machine that punches down the cap efficiently so as to extract the optimum amount of colour and aromas. The yeasts they use are the natural ones from the vineyard.

In the barrel room, they have over 2,500 barrels, though usually they have around 3,000.

We walk along an overhead walkway where we can get an ‘aerial’ view of the winery, which with the lighting makes the room look really attractive.

They have three types of oak: French, American and Russian. Marqués de Vargas was also a pioneer in the use of Russian oak.

All their wines have rated over 90 points on the Parker scale. They make about 300,000 bottles of Marqués de Vargas Reserva, about 45,000 bottles of Marqués de Vargas Reserva Privada and 3.000 bottles of Hacienda Prado Lagar.

Lastly, we go to the tasting room. Not very large but very tastefully decorated, and we taste a  Marqués de Vargas Reserva Reserva 2005.

Delicious.

This was a very agreeable visit where I was able to see a truly spectacular winery, elegant and with lots of style and personality. Just like the wines.

This post in Spanish: Visita a Bodegas Marqués de Vargas