Baron de Ley winery

Vineyards

Finca Monasterio is made from grapes exclusively coming from the vineyards around our XVI century benedictine monastery in Mendavia (Rioja Baja). Planted in 1.985, this vineyard has already got to its optimum age for top quality productions, furthermore bearing in mind our demanding viticultural practices, involving canopy management, restrictive prunnings and drastic green harvestings to reduce the yields to 4.000 kgrs./Ha. All these factors, plus a clearly mediterranean influenced climate, result in excellent maturations not only in sugars but also in polyphenols.

Grape Varieties

80 % Tempranillo and 20 % others, harvested in 15 kgr. cases and hand sorted.

Elaboration

After their hand harvesting, the grapes arrived to the winery in perfect condition, and went through our manual selecion table, where approximately 20 % of the grapes were discarded. The remaining grapes were destemmed and transported to stainless steel vats for fermentation at 30 ºC, with daily remontages and tasting of the must. Further to two additional weeks of maceration an excellent colour extraction was achieved, resulting in a young wine of remarkable power and potential but also suprising roundness.

Ageing

The wine was aged for 18 months in new french oak barrels and stayed for further 6 months in 10.000 litre french oak “foudres”, ideal to enhance the fruit characteristics of the wine. This wine was bottled avoiding filterings or stabilizations, why may result in the appearance of natural sediments in the bottle.