Each month we’ll be getting out the chalkboard to teach you about an aspect of our wines in greater depth. This month find out more about our latest launch: Cuevas de Arom from DO Campo de Borja.

As you follow our news, we guess that you are familiar with Bodegas Frontonio, our winery in Valdejalón. But have you tried the wines from our new project Cuevas de Arom?

Cueva is the Spanish word for cave, and in Ainzón, caves were the wineries of yesteryear, where the perfect, naturally cool conditions could be found for winemaking. Cuevas de Arom (Arom is Fernando’s surname backwards) recreates this traditional environment, producing wines in the space formerly occupied by a cement tank under the Santo Cristo Cooperative winery in Ainzón. As well as old vines, we believe that one of Spain’s greatest virtues is the cooperative business structure so we are pleased to be able to collaborate with the long-standing winery on this project.

Fernando and Mario have a lot of fun experimenting in their wine cave, with each wine being crafted according to the particular characteristics of the grapes, always in the aim of creating a fresher, more elegant style of Garnacha. You can find more out about the project and the way we work in this feature on Spanish Wine Lover.

The wines have names in the local Aragonese dialect: As ladieras, made from vines grown on slopes or laderas in Castilian Spanish, and Os cantals, from a vineyard with so many stones or cantos that “you can’t see the soil”. These are limited productions with 13,150 bottles produced of the first and 3,145 of the second. The interest generated by the wines, which, somewhat exceptionally, obtained 91 and 92 Parker Points for their first vintage – 2015 – has been such that 80% of the production was sold before its release. So if you want to get your hands on a bottle, you’d better be quick!