Ad Libitum Maturana Tinta Rioja 2019 Red Wine

Elaboration

Maturana Tinta was cultivated in Rioja for centuries — and then it almost vanished entirely. By the time a research project focused on recovering indigenous Rioja varieties began searching for it, only 17 vines remained, discovered in an old vineyard in Navarrete. Those 17 vines became the foundation of a recovery project led by Juan Carlos Sancha — professor of enology at the University of La Rioja, winemaker and academic in one — who propagated the variety, planted new vineyards in the 1990s on five hectares in Baños de Río Tobía and produced Ad Libitum as the most direct and most honest expression of what Maturana Tinta is: a variety of blue flower and licorice aromatics, good natural structure and acidity, with the slight astringency of a grape shaped by centuries of cultivation in the coldest zone of D.O.Ca Rioja. A wine that exists because one person understood that losing a grape variety is a loss that cannot be undone — and refused to let it happen.