
Les Freses
Land:
Spania
Region:
Valencia, Alicante
Eier:
Mara Baño
Grunnlagt:
2009
Vinmaker:
Mara Baño
Epost:
info@lesfreses.com
Adresse:
Parcela 1, polígono 12, 03749 Jesús Pobre, Alicante
Importør:
Fine Wines
Les Freses is located in Jesús Pobre, a town next to the Montgó Natural Park and a few kilometres from the Denia sea. They grow Muscat of Alexandria variety in the D.O. Alicante, in Valencia (Spain).
Les Freses has a completely Mediterranean soul. This winery, in an area with a long winemaking history, gets its name from the fact that the estate used to be a strawberry farm. These winemaking traditions have been maintained and enhanced through wines with a strong personality showcasing the character of the terroir.
A few years ago the land around our village was declared agricultural land and no new building is permitted. The owner could no longer develop it and sold it to Mara Bañó who from 2009 has transformed it into a vineyard. She has also built a beautiful and equipped micro-winery and owns 14 hectares of vineyards.
This area has no real tradition of producing quality wines at all and almost no tradition of producing dry wine, yet here Mara makes world class wines being made in a place that is never mentioned in any of the wine books.
As you might expect from a small estate made in a dry place by a young and passionate wine maker, these are “natural“ wines grown organically, fermented spontaneously with the wild yeast and have as little intervention as possible and as little sulphur used as is possible. Mara does grow some black grapes, but the main production is the whites.
Mara only grows one white grape at the moment, the traditional Moscatel de Alejandría – Muscat of Alexandria – but she makes five very different wines from it. The estate forms a single, triangular shaped block on the lower, very gentle slopes of the iconic Montgó mountain. It rises to 753 metres above sea level and dominates the area. It runs west to east, so vines on its south face sit in a perfect sun trap. The soils are pretty rocky limestone with rich red clay.