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Officially recognized by King Juan Carlos of Spain as a pioneer in the region and declared by the Wine Advocate as the force behind “the preservation of the Verdejo grape,” winemaker Angel Rodriguez crafted the beautifully aromatic 94 pt. 2020 Martinsancho Gran Vino de Rueda Verdejo from his oldest vines in Rueda, boasting energetic, sensual fruit with crisp, racy mineral-driven acidity in an elegantly balanced Spanish white wine among the region’s best, ready to enjoy at an incredible value price.
Known as the producer of one of Spain’s truest artisanal wines, Angel Rodriguez was an outlier in Rueda in the early 1970’s, preserving his phylloxera resistant low-yielding 17th century Verdejo vines while others were replacing them with more prolific varietals. Planted in deep stony soils in his family’s tiny one-acre Martinsancho vineyard, Angel took cuttings of the gnarled 250-year-old vines and painstakingly regrafted them by hand in 1976 to plant a 25-acre vineyard with nearly identical soils and has continued to provide authentic Martinsancho cuttings to expand Verdejo plantings throughout the region for decades. Crafting his Gran Vino de Ruedo from vines far beyond the DO’s minimum age requirements of 30 years, the vibrant old vine 2020 Martinsancho Gran Vino de Rueda Verdejo was aged on fine lees in centuries’ old 5,000-liter oak barrels in the family’s traditional underground cellar, yielding layers of juicy, refreshing fruit with complex herbal and mineral nuances and precise, saline-driven minerality.
While the Martinsancho Verdejo was famously described as the “the best dry white table wine I have tasted from Spain” by Robert Parker, the newly released 94 pt. 2020 Martinsancho Gran Vino de Rueda Verdejo elevates Angel’s traditionally styled Verdejo to an even higher level, reaffirming his reputation as the “godfather of Verdejo” and one of the region’s top producers, an immensely pleasurable Spanish white with a rich pedigree, priced to enjoy often.
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