Susana Ruberte and her husband Miguel are the owners of Bodegas Ruberte and are the skilled team behind our Ermita de San Lorenzo Gran Reserva wine. This wine has already proved to be a hit with Laithwaites customers, since it launched less than a year ago, and I wanted to fully understand how they have created such a popular wine. The answer is simple; both Susana and Miguel share a passion for winemaking that is unparalleled. Every winemaking decision they make, is taken to ensure that their wine is treated with the utmost care and attention – even if this requires backbreaking hard graft from Susana and Miguel.
Rather than use a state of the art modern winery, The Ruberte family have opted to age their wines deep inside the hillside of the village of Borja in a cave, dug out by hand, where the temperatures remain constant throughout the harsh winters and blisteringly hot summers. They are the only people in Borja to use these 500 year old caves to age wines.
Ermita de San Lorenzo is part aged in enormous barricas, the largest of which holds 40,000 litres of wine! These do not fit through the door of the cellar, but Susana and Miguel feel that these barricas offer the best way to age their wine. Their solution is to build the barricas at the production plant, to ensure they are made correctly, dismantle the barrica and reassemble inside the hillside cellar. That is dedication to the cause.
When the time comes for cleaning these barricas, Miguel climbs inside the barrica and scrubs away by hand, using only water and a wire brush – it takes an entire day to clean each barrel!
Visiting Susana and Miguel made me realise just how much effort goes into making each bottle of our Ermita de San Lorenzo wines and how privileged we are to work with such a dedicated couple as the Rubertes.
Drinking a glass of their delicious Ermita will never be quite the same again!
Helen McEvoy, Buyer
Tony is on holiday
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