I am Cabernet Garmendia 0%

-Mr Ferrán, tell us, why is it special a sulfitesfree wine?

-Because we have always believed that it was impossible, but today is a day to feel proud of the fact that we finally achieved what we intended: to sufficiently make the grapes developed their own defences, such as sulfites, so that not to have the need to add these in the process. In Los Pinos, we are the first to do so and I know that we were not the only ones.

-Do you say so regarding the El Claustro wineries, as well in Fontanares?

-I say that regarding Ramón Angost, our winemaker. It was him who chose the most jam-tasting garnacha, the finest monastrell, and the most flowery syrah ... Without him, we would not have achieved the right spot where the grapes have matured just enough to protect the evolution of the wine.

- Was the idea brought up by Ramón Angost himself?

Actually, it was my little daughter’s, Flora. Like many others who even do not know it, some people are allergic to sulfites and, two years ago, playing in the cellar, she started jumping onto sacks and unknowingly playing to crown the mountain of sulphites bags. Fortunately, nothing happened but I took a severe shock as the good father I am, because since her mother died, I lack days and hands to take care for her.

-You speak as a foreman of Los Pinos, but I have heard that the winery has changed hands. ...

I hold Flora by her shoulders, in front of me. When I heard the question I wanted to be swallowed by earth, I lacked all my saliva in justone second. Flora, however, without a shadow of doubt looked up to let me know that she knew I was asked by the journalist:

- It’s you, Cabernet?

-Yes, my darling, it seems that it’s me.

-You are to be shown on TV like my dad, are you going to be famous?

-Just beautiful girls like you can become famous.

-Then you will not be famous because you're very ugly with those glasses, they are making you old.

-Because I am old Flora, I said starting to laugh such a lot that more than one person turn to look at me. I thought that my age should be asked to the empty bottle of Cutty Shark that was lying under my bed in the new winery.

-Yes, indeed, Cabernet Garmendia, granddaughter of the founder of the winery, Manuel Garmendia and heiress of a centenary knowledge that has been acquired through three continents. From now forwards she is at the forefront of this major ecological project.

Jacinto would have not better defined me, any other would have recalled the dark bags under my eyes. He finished his sentence with a gesture in which, with the fingers wedged and a smile on his face, gave me a warm welcome at his side next to the reporter:

I am Cabernet Garmendia.

Valencia. Night of wines

She came in with dark glasses and a white handkerchief that confused her face among any other woman’s, holding a cup of rotten-wood-tasting tempranillo, worthing as much as some sort of vinegar. Despite the discomfort, as she stepped silently forward like an invisible spectrum to the outside of the crowd and approached the booth of the cave, he saw Jacinto talking to the cameras of the local television. Unable to turn over faster than the flounces of her white dress, she swallowed her cologne-flavoured tempranillo in just one drink better than to have to bite her own tongue.

Elisabeth Garmendia had inherited 60 acres of vineyards beyond where her eyes imagined from her attic in the outskirts of the Spanish city of Alicante. Beyond the Carrasqueta pass, one world, and even beyond, what she considered a deceptive advertising called the Valencian Tuscany. It was her grandfather who, having emigrated to Mendoza in Argentina after two years in the guerrilla ambushed in the Cantabrian mountains of Pas, said goodbye to his wife and his only son to embark himself on the one of the vessels parting from the port of Alicante, sheltering Republicans who had lost all hope of democracy, to go towards the American exile. How many times did her grandfather told her how tough it was to cross from one end to the other a country torn in two by war?

She had dark eyes, with purple reflections, so intense, with this dense purple coat and gloss that gives a fresh and sweet interior and, each time his grandfather Manuel, whom the family called the Pampa grandfather, picked her chin up right to see them from his overflowing-eyelids eyes, he said:

-My little darling, what your father felt when he gave you that name? If you only need to look at these eyes to realize you deserved a more beautiful one, my little Cabernet.

And he gave her a kiss on the swirl of curls on his forehead.

When she entered the cellar wringing in her hands the deed, trying to contain her excitation, she realized her grandfather had been commissioned to make her feel at home:
- Are you Mrs Cabernet Garmendia? Nice to meet you, we were expecting you.

Jacinto said riding on the backs of a white horse.

For a moment she felt tempted to correct his error, but she realized that there, between those four walls of vineyards, pines and sky, no one would take into account the past that he had been forced to flee, and perhaps could start once again ...

- Cabernet! Cabernet! he shouted from afar Jacinto. She could no longer flee.
- Jacinto...

- You hold an empty cup, not possible! Come with me, we introduce the new wine tonight and you're perfect, you even give them a name.

-Jacinto, I do not know if I can, I do not know...

But it was late. That evening it was introduced at the Botanical Garden of Valencia the new wine without sulfites making her coming out in Spanish wine society.