The Abadía Retuerta estate is located in the heart of the Douro valley, on the bank of which stands the impressive Abbey Santa María de Retuerta dating from the 12th century. The project Abadía Retuerta LeDomaine was born in 1988 with the clear mission of recovering the culture, vineyard and ancestral traditions that surrounded the Abbey, which today has become LeDomaine, one of the most prestigious hotels in the world. The replanting of the vineyard began in 1991 and the winery has been producing quality wines since 1996.
Winery and vineyards
The estate covers an area of 700 hectares, of which only the best terroirs (soils) have had vineyards planted, distributed in small parcels or plots. A total of 54 plots have been identified with very different characteristics, among which the composition of the soil where the vineyard grows stands out. Each one is planted with a single variety. In total, they are 70% Tempranillo, 10% Cabernet Sauvignon and 10% Syrah; the remaining 10% is divided between Merlot, Petit Verdot and some white varieties which until the 2011 season were made only experimentally.
The winery, conceived and designed by French oenologist Pascal Delbeck, and consolidated by the current grower of the vineyard and oenologist Ángel Anocíbar, is one of most innovative and technologically advanced in Europe. It was among the first facilities in Spain to opt to use only gravity to move the wine, its crane-raised deposits system or a patented system of our own for extracting the wine being notable.
The winery’s philosophy is based on making wines which reflect the personality of each terroir, which constitutes the essence of our single-vineyard wines (Vinos de Pago). They are made only if the season is of exceptional quality. Abadía Retuerta’s Vinos de Pago are: Pago Negralada, Pago Valdebellón, Pago Garduña and PV (Petit Verdot).
The winery’s outstanding wine is Abadía Retuerta Selección Especial where the season’s best wines are blended, which offers a perfect in-depth analysis of the estate, since the grape percentage with which it is made is similar to that of the main varieties planted in the vineyard (75% Tempranillo, 15% Cabernet Sauvignon and 10% Syrah).
Abadía Retuerta Selección Especial 2001 was awarded the Red Wine Trophy at the International Wine Challenge in London in 2005. More recently, Abadía Retuerta became the first Spanish producer to have its Abadía Retuerta Selección Especial ranked for three consecutive years among the Top 100 Wines of the World, a list published since 1998 in Wine Spectator, the respected US magazine.
Abadía Retuerta’s white wine LeDomaine is at last a reality since the 2011 vintage. The winery’s first white wine for laying down from the terroir, the fruit of 20 years of research, obtained from Sauvignon Blanc vineyards, enriched with a touch of Verdejo and other white varieties. On its first vintage, Abadía Retuerta Le Domaine 2011 was named Best Spanish White Wine by Verema.com in 2013.
And from 2018 will be released a new wine made with the Tempranillo pre-phylloxera variety of Abadía Retuerta. An exciting project that has recovered 6 clones of Tempranillo, which are survivors of the plague of phylloxera that ravaged Europe in the late nineteenth century. It shows extraordinary qualities and represents the maximum expression of the adaptation of Tempranillo to the Abadía Retuerta terroir.
The "Crafted Spanish Foods": wine salt, pine nuts and honey products from the estate are other Abadía Retuerta specialties.