The owner of El Lagar de Isilla, restaurateur and hotelier José Andrés Zapatero Plaza, says that “without knowing why, I have always had wine in my vein”. He had already trodden the grapes as a child in the winery with his grandfather’s draft, in Fresnillo de las Dueñas (Burgos). José Andrés Zapatero keeps as a fetishist treasure at the entrance of his hotel the great key to his grandfather’s winery, where he had made clarets long before turning a restaurant in the central street of Isilla de Aranda de Duero into a reference establishment famous for its lamb roasted in a wood oven. In its bar you can taste, by glass or bottle, many of the Ribera del Duero wines and a wide variety of tapas and portions. Today it is the main tourist attraction of Aranda de Duero.
The history of Bodegas El Lagar de Isilla and its wines began in 1995. It all began in the historic 15th-century winery located below the El Lagar de Isilla restaurant, in Aranda de Duero. There, in the shadows of its 12.5 meter depth, the Zapatero Pinto family produced the first 3,000 bottles of wine. They soon reached 50,000 and this charming space was too small for them. Today they already produce some 250,000 bottles annually, of which 10% are exported to a total of 17 countries around the world.
Denmark, the Netherlands and Switzerland are its main international markets. They have up to 54 distributors in Spain. There are 52 hectares of own vineyards, of which 30 are young vineyards and 10 are old vineyards (60 to 90 years old). They also buy grapes from eight trusted vintners. Its old vineyards are located in the municipalities of La Vid, San Juan del Monte, Matanza de Soria, Peñaranda de Duero and Langa de Duero.
The acceptance of the wines produced by El Lagar de Isilla led the Zapatero Pinto family to consider a new location for their winery. Thus, the wine complex of La Vid arose, built on a colonial-style estate from 1890. First it was the winery and the gourmet store and then the hotel. The winery is integrated into the old buildings of the farm, respecting the materials of the time such as wood and stone.
The aging cellar is one of the parts of the winery that has been restored, conserving the primitive stone arch and the walls. It consists of five warehouses and a social building with offices, a tasting room and a porch decorated with various typical farm tools from the Ribera del Duero. Next door, also integrated into the colonial estate, is the El Lagar de Isilla Boutique Hotel, with 21 rooms themed around wine, its restaurant La Casona de La Vid and a spa with wine therapy. For all these reasons, the Zapatero Pinto family has received the Wine Tourism Merit Award from the Wine Routes of Spain.
The 2019 vintage was qualified as excellent by the tasting committee of the DO Ribera del Duero Regulatory Council. In the words of Enrique Pascual, President of the Council, “the 2019 harvest took place with absolute normality, on usual dates, without any incident to report throughout the cycle.” He added that “the wines produced from the 2019 vintage will not only delight lovers of lighter, fresh, young wines, but also lovers of Ribera aged wines, recalling to a certain extent the long-lived vintages of the past.” “.
The grapes for El Lagar de Isilla Matanza de Soria 2019 come from a group of several old vines located in the town of Matanza de Soria (in the judicial district of El Burgo de Osma), planted at an altitude of approximately 935 meters above sea level. from sea. It is made with 95% Tempranillo and the rest with native white varieties, mainly Albillo Mayor. The Soria micro-vineyards where its grapes are born were planted about 90 years ago. Its soils are made of shallow iron clay, with a calcareous subsoil mixed with fine sand. Its yields are very low. They harvested manually in boxes of 15 kilos.
After cooling the harvest overnight at 8 °C, a double selection of the bunch is made. Cold maceration is practiced for 5-7 days, at 8ºC, until the start of alcoholic fermentation, which is carried out in open containers, for 7-9 days, at 24ºC. Malolactic fermentation takes place in fine-grained, medium-toasted French oak barrels. Barrel aging lasts for 17 months in 300, 400 and 500 liter French oak barrels. The wine is subjected to a light and respectful filtering, and its acidity is not corrected. A total of 2,798 bottles have been produced from this vintage.
The Lagar de Isilla Matanza de Soria 2019, which has the oenological advice of Aurelio García, has a medium layer, and a ruby ??color. Clear and brilliant. It exhibits notes of red and black fruits (currants, sour strawberries or blueberries) and aromatic herbs on a mineral background, with a somewhat electric iron point. It also shows notes reminiscent of aging in wood (vanilla and cedar), offering a silky tactile sensation. Despite its 14.5º of alcohol, it is fresh and extremely elegant thanks to a low pH of 3.61 and a good sensation of acidity. Volume, complexity and verticality at the same time in an easy-to-drink wine.
The romantic owner of El Lagar de Isilla affirms that this wine is “transparent”, since it is marked by “the personality of its territory”. With wines like this he wants to “value the soils of each area and its territory”. José Andrés Zapatero likes to harmonize his wine with some Castilian lamb chops with vine shoots, with a conger eel a la arandina (battered and prepared with white wine, red peppers, garlic cloves, olive oil and a few strands of saffron) or with a preve roast rabbit (baked with garlic cloves, vinegar, olive oil and paprika) cooked in his private house in Fresnillo de las Dueñas.
