Pegaso: sleek wines from Spain's Gredos Mountains

West of Madrid, reaching towards Portugal, the Gredos Mountains is a wild place, fabulous for hiking. The slopes are littered with granite boulders that can be as big as houses, and the main inhabitants are mountain goats and vultures. Once upon a time, this was also a major viticultural area, supplying wine to the tables of Madrid. But when the railway was completed between Madrid and the easy-to-farm valley of Valdepeñas, the challenging vineyards of Gredos were mostly abandoned. Fast forward to the 1990s and the arrival of Telmo Rodriguez, one of the great forces of modern Spanish winemaking. Like his contemporary Álvaro Palacios, he has made a career out of resurrecting old, abandoned vineyards. Exploring Gredos, Telmo was amazed when he came across the Arrebatacapas vineyard: 'this extraordinary vineyard was growing wild, without winemaker, oenologist or engineer: it was an orphan.'  

But Telmo needed a partner to start redeveloping Gredos. He teamed up with local resident, wine enthusiast and two-time world rally champion Carlos Sainz Sr. The driver put down a lot of capital and got naming rights; he chose 'Pegaso' (Pegasus), after the Spanish car and truck manufacturer which turned out some especially sleek sports cars in the 1940s and 1950s. Where Pegaso led, many have followed. In 2016, the Pegaso team was joined by top winemaker Marc Isart, who was a founding member of the other great Gredos success story, Comando G. 

Vineyards in Gredos are planted largely to Garnacha, better known as Grenache. But despite its fame making ripe, fruit-driven wines in the southern Rhône, Grenache is originally a Spanish grape variety. The higher altitude of the Gredos vineyards makes for a tense, more mineral, less full-bodied expression that can sometimes verge on Pinot Noir. From granite soils, Granito is fluid and fine-boned, all raspberry and lavender. From slate soils, Pizarra has a more herbal style, with thyme and cardamom showing through the panoply of red fruit. The single vineyard cuvée Arrebatacapas is the most complex of the lot, with haunting aromatics and an almost ethereal palate. All these wines are outstanding for their fine tannin management. /NT