Pago Candela

Pago Candela is a red wine from the D.O. La Rioja produced by the Martínez Palacios winery. Thie wine is a blend of two different grape varieties; Tempranillo (90%) and Graciano (10%).

The grapes used to make this wine come from the estate that gives this wine its name; El Pago Candela, the oldest vineyard owned by the winery. The bunches are harvested at their optimum ripeness, with the grapes being selected again by the winery. The bunches are then transported to the winery using small wooden boxes with 15kg capacities, so that the grapes arrive at the celler whole and do not break or lose their qualities.

At the winery’s facilities, the grapes undergo cold pre-ferment maceration in wooden vats with 1,800kg capacity for five days. Following this, the temperature is increased to a maximum of 25ºC and the alcoholic fermentation, which lasts 10 days, is carried out. After the wine is transferred to new French and European oak barrels where the malolactic fermentation is done, with daily stirring taking place until fermentation is finished.

Pago Candela is then aged for 14 months in mixed French and American oak barrels. It it decanted 3 times by simple decantation, without using any mechanical mean, to take out all the impurities that the oak may provide.

Martínez Palacios is a family winery in the Rioja region founded in 1999 by two brothers Miguel and Julio. They come from a family that has a strong tradition in winemaking, spanning back two generations to the late nineteenth century.