The story began on a hot day in sun-drenched Andalusia when he first sipped a refreshing glass of Verdejo with its characteristic pale, straw colour and subtle aromas of hay. Sometime later, on Spain’s northern Castilian plateau where the horizons are vast and the climatic conditions extreme, and where the Verdejo grape grows in outstanding pebbly soils, Didier Belondrade began to realise that Spain had not just stolen his heart; it was stirring something deep in his soul.
In 1994 an exciting new era for Rueda was dawning. It was in that year that a Frenchman, living at the time in Nava del Rey, released a wine that was to change the shape of things to come for the Verdejo grape. This wine was Belondrade y Lurton -a Verdejo, fermented and aged on its lees; an elegant wine, harmoniously integrated in the oak, unctuous, and expressing the complexity offered by the different terroirs in which it was grown.
Didier Belondrade’s belief in the ageing potential of wines made with the Verdejo grape was growing with each new vintage; and in the year 2000 this conviction was mirrored in the building of the winery at La Seca, designed by the architect Vicent Dufos du Rau.
Belondrade y Lurton is more than just a wine. It’s a philosophy, a vision, that especially values caring for the natural environment; working the vines sustainably; meticulous sorting of the berries and handling them with loving care; developing its own yeast cultures; and keeping the wine almost one year in barrel and six months in bottle before its release on the market. It’s also the signature of the person behind the wine and an affectionate nod to the members of his family, since once he had settled in La Seca, Didier Belondrade began producing two other wines which he named after his two daughters: Quinta Clarisa Belondrade and Quinta Apolonia Belondrade; the former a rosé (100% Tempranillo), the latter an unoaked white (100% Verdejo) and the second wine of Belondrade, which enables an enhanced selection of the lots for the first wine, Belondrade y Lurton.
The Belondrade vineyard is made up of 30 hectares (74 acres) divided up into 19 plots that bring different characteristics to the wine, depending on soil types, exposures, rootstocks and clones. The soils of this part of the plateau are generally made up of a 10-60cm deep layer of pebbles over a layer of clay and a deep stratum of limestone.
However in the different Belondrade plots there are pebbles and varying degrees of sand and clay, which add further to the complexity of the wine’s characteristics.
The density of plantation ranges from 1,100 to 3,300 vines per hectare with an average yield of 30 to 35 hectolitres per hectare. All of the vines belong to the property and have an average age of 30 years for Belondrade y Lurton and eight years for BELONDRADE Quinta Apolonia.
The vine canes are pruned relatively long because of the high risk of spring frosts and hail. De-budding and de-suckering are later carried out to ventilate the vine canopy, and crop thinning is done when necessary to keep down yields. Since the beginning, the vineyard is worked sustainably; and today has acquired the organic certification.
The vineyard is situated at an altitude of 750 metres with an average rainfall of between 300 and 350mm a year. The climate is continental, with characteristic cold and long winters and short hot summers with wide swings of temperature between day and night.