THE family of footballer Andrés Iniesta — the Barcelona FC and Spanish National soccer team star and winners of the 2010 FIFA World Cup – has always been associated with grapes and wine.
His homeland, Fuentealbilla, in the province of Albacete, is a region which boasts mature vineyards, weather-beaten by Castilla-La Mancha’s extreme climate.
Native varieties such as Bobal, Macabeo and Graciano, together with Chardonnay, Petit Verdot and Sauvignon Blanc, which have adapted well to the region’s soils, are the grapes Bodega Iniesta employs to make its wines.
The bodega, which is barely a year and a half old, is the realisation of one of Andrés Iniesta’s dreams: to make his own wines from the grapes grown in the family vineyards. Vineyards which his father, José Antonio started to plant and tend in the 1990s.
The midfielder affirms that: ‘This is not some celebrity pet project. In addition to the fact
that my family has always dreamed of owning a bodega, football has given me so much that this is a way of giving a little something back to the place I was born. It’s a long-term project, which will continue long after I retire.’
In the beginning, the family owned only around 10 hectares, a figure which little by little increased until reaching the more than 120 hectares of today.
With such a large volume of quality grapes the Iniesta Luján family began to think about building its very own bodega, an idea which became reality in 2010, with the inauguration of Bodega Iniesta’s main building and the launch of its first wines on the market.
Located in the heart of DO Manchuela, between the Cabriel and Júcar river basins, the bodega boasts the most cutting-edge technology available on the market for making fine wines.
One of the bodega’s most outstanding pieces of equipment is the Boreal refrigeration system —one of the few that exist in Spain— which is able to chill the grapes instantly as they enter the bodega, thus preserving the aromatic characteristics of each individual variety which in turn provides precise control over the fermentation process.
