Until we presented the first Casa Don Ángel on May 19 2000, no one believed that an aged wine could be made from Bobal grapes. It had always been said that bobal could not be aged in oak, it oxidized quickly, it was only good for making double paste rosés and reds…
But Félix Martínez, winemaker at Vera de Estenas, believed in the potential of the Bobal. He thought that, properly grown and elaborated, Bobal could give aged reds and he knew that no one had ever tried it. For this reason, when Félix took over the management of the company in the nineties, he began to take care of the old Bobal vines: «One century old bobal vines at a time when everyone uprooted them to collect subsidies, or to plant so-called «improved varieties» seemed crazy, but I thought that these varieties were already all over the world –we ourselves had already farmed successfully– and our Bobal could set us apart from the rest. We worked with ambition and managed to produce a monovarietal wine that placed Bobal in the world of premium wines for the first time. And we wanted it to be monovarietal so that no one could attribute its virtues to other varieties.”
Twenty-three years after that presentation, our CASA DON ÁNGEL ESTENAS BOBAL shares wine lists with Burgundy, Bordeaux, Riojas or Riberas in some of the best restaurants in the world.
