Cantalapiedra Viticultores is a family-run organic and biodynamic winery from La Seca, Valladolid, in the heart of Spain’s Rueda region of Castilla y León. While the family has been growing grapes here for generations, Manuel Cantalapiedra established the winery in 2014.
With 20–21 hectares of vineyards at 750 m altitude, the estate works organically with biodynamic practices, hand-harvesting, spontaneous fermentations, minimal sulphur, and no irrigation. Most of their wines are labeled as Vino de la Tierra de Castilla y León, even though the vineyards are squarely inside Rueda’s borders. The result is pure, terroir-driven wines that truly speak of La Seca.
750 m High Altitude Wines From Castilla y León
Their flagship Cantayano, first released in 2014, is a 100% Verdejo from multiple plots in La Seca. Named after Manuel’s surnames (Cantalapiedra Moyano), it is mainly fermented in stainless steel, with a small portion aged in used barrels on lees for eight months before bottling unfiltered. Fresh, precise, and expressive.
Majuelo del Chiviritero is another pure Verdejo from a single two-hectare vineyard planted in 1981 on a stony, clay-rich plateau. Hand-harvested which is rare in Rueda and it ferments with native yeasts and ages on lees in used French oak, followed by time in stainless steel. The result is a serious, structured wine with notable depth.
From a neighbouring hillside site, Majuelo El Espejo offers a more tension-driven style, with greater length and finesse due to its shallower soils and lower stone content. The estate’s pinnacle wine, La Otea, comes from a pre-phylloxera, 150 year old vineyard on sandy soils in Villanueva del Duero. Extremely low yields produce a concentrated, complex, and profound expression of Verdejo.
These are some of the most exciting wines coming out of Spain, and very limited quantities are available in Australia.
