Alfredo Maestro is a grower who has turned the staid traditionalism of Ribera del Duero on its head. Throwing out the conventional script (along with the new barrique), his many rewrites have included conversion to organic farming and eliminating any chemicals in the vineyard or additions in the cellar. By 2003, when the term ‘natural wine’ was still in its infancy, all of Maestro’s wines were being fermented with their native yeasts and bottled without filtration—and in most cases without sulphur. These ideas came instinctively.

Maestro’s strength revolves around revitalising ancient majuelos—small, old-vine parcels dotted through the highlands of Ribera del Duero and the mountains around Madrid. Today he works fifty or so of these majuelos (some consisting of just a few rows of vines) many of which have been donated to him by traditional owners who know he will coax the best out of their precipitous, high plots and extremely old vines.

A prominent exponent of the natural movement in Spain, Maestro works renegade-style, far outside the confines of his vineyards’ D.O. legislation, meaning the wines are not labelled according to their region of origin. As with most one-man bands, he has been content to sell what little wine he makes to an enthusiastic gang of local supporters and a handful of importers. He now farms nine hectares of old-vine highland vineyards on outcrops of limestone or granite and runs two small, rudimentary bodegas: the first located in his native Peñafiel; and the other in the Navalcarnero area, 200 kilometres south in the hills above Madrid. Like the other conservative bastions of Spanish viticulture, Ribera now has its own avant-garde pied piper.