This is Rafa Bernabé’s project, reviving old vines and old methods, such as this skin contact, orange wine offering, raised in tinajas, those old clay jars (not buried). He uses three different sizes 450, 300, and 250 liters. I actually met Rafa and tasted his wines when in Georgia. Loved the wines there and loved them again when tasted in San Francisco. The wines are compelling and hence this white wine, filled with nectarine and apricot aromatics and juice, just a little tannin, and a pleasant 12% alcohol.

Another fab wine from Rafa, and this one is culled from a selection of 40–80 year old vines planted on limestone and granite, two faves of mine in one terroir. The wine is raised half in French oak and half in local acacia barrels. The grape, Forcayat, is missing from Jancis Robinson’s tome Grapes, so I don’t have a clue what it is genetically, but where it comes from, it screams place and has plenty of bones. 13% alcohol.