Albillo 2022

I like knowing what to expect and having a plan. So I really surprised myself making the Albillo this past harvest. I originally had planned on making a small amount of Garnacha. I had never made my own wine and wanted to keep the project small and contained. But one morning Fabio, the winemaker at Vinos Ambiz where I’m making my wine, asked if I would like some Albillo. I said yes.

The fruit came from a local grower in Sierra de Gredos, harvested on August 25th with nice acidity and mature skins. I found a working stainless steel tank in the winery and de-stemmed and crushed about 300kg of the grapes into it. The next day I had to leave town for a wedding. I hoped the native yeast would start the fermentation quickly, thanks to the hot Gredos weather (it did). And each day, my friend Wouter did a daily punch-down for me, pushing down the skins that float to the top of the tank down into the juice/wine, to prevent oxidation and increase color extraction. I was stressed about not having control of the fermentation process, as each day the wine was getting more color, aromas, and body, and I wanted to make the perfect decision of when to rack the wine off of the skins.

After four days, I returned to the winery and found the fermentation was slowing down, with nice complexity and light orange color, with some interesting salinity on the palate. I took the wine off of the skins by loading the ferment into a manual press (see below) and letting the wine flow out and pumping it into a stainless steel tank. Then I used the press to crush the remaining skins and extract as much liquid out of them as possible. I pumped that wine into a small demi-john, as it had much more color and body. The fermentations finished quickly and have remained untouched in tank, waiting to be bottled.

Loading the grapes into the manual press

Before, working in other wineries, I was overwhelmed by the amount of choices winemakers needed to make. When to pick the grapes? To press directly or do skin contact? Which yeast to use, and if any corrective additions with winemaking products needed to be made? To ferment in stainless steel or barrel? I made the Albillo without a real plan, much control over the materials, and left town hoping the wine sort of made itself. This made me change my perspective on what ‘winemaking’ can be. It can be complicated, slightly stressful, and meticulously planned to achieve a specific flavor profile in the wine with precision. And I would actually like to have that experience and challenge someday. But it was also important for me to learn that winemaking can be relaxed, trusting the native yeast to ferment the juice and the grapes to evolve into wine in their own way, in a hands-off approach. This next harvest I am hoping to find something in the middle.