Maestro Alfredo Tempranillo 'Almate' 2021

Grape Varietal: Tempranillo (Tinto Fino)

Country: Spain

Region: Castilla y León VT, Ribera del Duero

The Wine: Alfredo Maestro is a self-taught natural winemaker in Peñafiel, in the heart of Ribera del Duero, who began farming and making wine in 1998 after his family migrated from the Basque Country. He learned enology from textbooks at a time when the playbook was heavy with additives — yeasts, enzymes, color enhancers, acid corrections — and spent years doing exactly that before a deeper dissonance between his organic farming and his chemical cellar work pushed him toward a complete break. By 2003 he was making wine without any additions whatsoever, including sulfur.

Viña Almate takes its name from both his first vineyard and from himself — Al-Ma-Te (Love Yourself) — and is his entry-level Duero wine. It draws from multiple plots of Tinto Fino (the local name for Tempranillo) at Valtiendas at 1,000 meters elevation and Peñafiel at 700 meters, with vine ages ranging from 20 to over 80 years.

The wine is fermented in steel with 15–20 days of maceration and 50–100% whole-cluster inclusion depending on vintage, raised over one winter with a single racking, unfined, unfiltered, and with no added SO₂.

The 2021 Almate is a lively, high-altitude Tempranillo that reads more like a mountain wine than a conventional Ribera — fresh, dark-fruited, and direct. It opens with aromas of blueberry, sour cherry, violet, and dried herbs, with a flinty mineral thread running underneath. On the palate it is medium-to-full-bodied and energetic, with firm but supple tannins, good acidity at elevation, and a long finish of dark fruit, iron, and spice.

Pairing: Roasted eggplant and red pepper stew with smoked paprika, lamb chops with rosemary and charred fat, fried eggs on crusty bread, or a long Castilian lunch of roast meat eaten at a wooden table with nothing but a carafe and good bread between you.