Vega Sicilia’s Winemaker,
Under His Own Name.

Dear Artisans,

At last Saturday’s “Best of Spain” tasting, three wines from one family blew the room away. By the end of the afternoon they were our second best sellers, right behind the Clos Martinet Priorat — and the Clos Martinet had a 98-point head start.

They were the wines of Bodegas Mauro, and the story behind them explains everything about how they taste and what they cost.

Mariano García was literally raised on the grounds of Vega Sicilia — Spain’s most storied estate — the son of a lifetime employee, and he became the first degree-holding winemaker in the estate’s history. For thirty years, from 1968 to 1998, he ran its cellars. Wine Spectator put the rest plainly: much credit for Ribera’s rapid ascent goes to Mariano García and his extended family of winemakers.

In 1980 he founded Bodegas Mauro in a seventeenth-century stone house in Tudela de Duero, in homage to his father. His son Eduardo joined him in 2001, arriving with cellar experience from Cos d’Estournel and Ridge Vineyards. You might have heard of them.

Everything is farmed organically and biodynamically, fermented on native yeasts, and built the way Mariano has always built wine. In his own words: “My concept of winemaking is hands-off, to respect the wine, do lots of work in the vineyard, and make wine with a very pure style.” The result is age-worthy yet drinkable now, and deeply rooted in the territory.

Here is the quirk that makes these prices possible.

Bodegas Mauro sits just outside the official boundary lines of the Ribera del Duero appellation. Same River Duero, same warm, stony calcareous-clay soils, same winemaker who made the region famous — but because the label cannot say Ribera del Duero, the market prices these wines 30 to 70% below comparable bottlings from inside the lines. In our experience they overperform their price tags two to three times over. You are paying for the map, not the wine, and the map is wrong.

The blend is Tempranillo with a small amount of Syrah, beautifully suited to those warm stony soils. The result is Ribera del Duero with a twist: a gorgeous, Super-Tuscan-like profile that had Saturday’s room going back for third tastes. And when the family does bottle inside the lines, it is the Garmón below — 95 points from Vinous.

Mariano describes the VS in his own words: “generous, opulent, seductive, complex and rich, in a refined, velvety style.” His barrel selection from the oldest vines, made only in the years that earn it.

The winemaker who built a region,
priced by a line on a map.

Thirty years running the cellars of Vega Sicilia. A son trained at Cos d’Estournel and Ridge. Organic, biodynamic farming on the banks of the Duero, and scores from 93 to 95 across the range — at prices of yesteryear, because the appellation boundary happens to fall on the wrong side of the road.

Saturday’s room figured it out in one afternoon. Six bottles of the 2020 and four of the VS are what remain, and the 2022 will follow them.

Cheers,

— James Tran

Last 6 Bottles Of The 2020 · Last 4 Of The VS · From $59.99

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