Cebreros’ vineyards were all but forgotten when Telmo rediscovered abandoned 60+ year-old vines of bush-trained garnacha in this unspoiled, desolate, extreme mountain climate while hiking old sheep herding trails with his father in the mid-1990’s. Cebreros, uniquely, is home to a rare band of metamorphic reddish-brown slate that interrupts a wild mountainside of granitic red clay at around 1100m.
Returning from the famed J.L. Chave cellar in the Northern Rhone in 1999, Telmo and his partner Pablo Eguskiza began recovering the site in 1999 starting with the historic, Grand Cru slope of Arrebatacapas. Today, Pegaso’s considered the project that gave rise to the modern Sierra de Gredos wine movement and fomented Cebreros’ appellation status in 2016 and Arrebatacapas’ 1,500 bottles per vintage is perennially considered one of Gredos’ most stunning, ageable and collectible achievements.
Just below that singular, historic site sit El Robledillo and El Mojon from 890-920m on pure, rocky granite, which produces the lineups more silky and elegant expression: Granito. Above the slate line, reaching up to 1200m, the Barrancos de Pizarra bottling features only slate-driven parcels (from the La Curva, La Redonda and Arrebatacapas vineyards), showcasing power, structure and flamboyance. At 1100m, the true single vineyard Arrebatacapas features both soils and expresses the pinnace of Cebreros’ sophistication: regal, polished and sophisticated in it’s cellarability.
Side by side, these three parcellaire bottlings make for one of the most intriguing red wine soil-type tastings in the vast world of wine.
Since 2016, Gredos legend Marc Isart – a founding member of Commando G who helped Telmo with his early vineyard work at Pegaso – has been the lead winemaker, crafting an expression of Cebreros that focuses on restraint, structure and purity of fruit that reminds one as much of mountain nebbiolo as garnacha. As always, the wines are farmed with organic certification and low-intervention winemaking.
