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Sometimes it’s good to let the winegrower do the talking. Here’s Marc Isart, “So many wines are made just for impact but you can only drink one glass of them. My goal is to produce grower wines. Wines that can be drunk daily. Wines that are more savoury than sweet. Wines where it is hard to stop drinking.”

When he’s not working his magic at Bernabeleva, Marc Isart – with his wife Carmen Pérez – tends to his small family estate, 120km away in the hills above Madrid, or Arganda del Rey to be specific. It is the wines of this home estate that we offer today. We’re still in Viños de Madrid country, the high altitude (700-800 metres in this case) vineyards that are situated in the granitic mountain chain that borders Madrid.

In 2016, Isart added two wines to his swashbuckling La Maldicion portfolio: the Gleba de Arcilla Tempranillo and Oxidativo de la Olla. The concept of Oxidative de la Olla is a tradition-inspired Malvar white aged in clay tinaja. The Gleba de Arcilla, offered here, is a single parcel, old vine Tempranillo naturally fermented as whole clusters.

Isart sources this wine from the same vineyard as his entry-level Tempranillo, Tinto de Valdilecha. Unlike that wine, however, Gelba de Arcilla is made as a 100% Tempranillo, and from a single block of old vines (planted in 1915 and 1965). The grapes are fermented and macerated as whole bunches for 65 days and them raised in old oak vessel of 12 months before being bottled unfiltered.