De Sol a Sol Tinaja Airén is a white wine without designation of origin, prepared by Esencia Rural in Quero, Toledo.
Julián Ruiz Villanueva, whose father was a livestock breeder, and his mother, a farmer, left his hard country life when very young to go and study in Madrid. Years later, having graduated in Social Studies, he returned to start his career in organic agriculture in an area where people were not familiar with these ideas.
After planting organic melons and peppers, in 1998 he decided to try his luck with organic wines. With 50 hectares of vines, most of them very old and even pre-phylloxera, he opted for local varieties, Airén and Tinto Velasco, complemented with Tempranillo and Syrah. Esencia Rural’s philosophy is to make wines in a way that involved a minimum of intervention, leaving the terroir and the variety to express themselves naturally, without filters or restraints.
De Sol a Sol Tinaja Airén is a wine made with Airén grapes from the estate’s own pre-phylloxera vineyards, from the “El Almendruco” site, growing on sandy-calcareous soils.
After harvest by hand, some of the grapes are destemmed. They are macerated for 112 days in three earthenware jars in the vineyard itself. Alcoholic fermentation is carried out with local yeasts, and malolactic fermentation is spontaneous. Once the wine is separated from its skins, it is bottled in the same vineyard without added sulfites.