The La Perdida story is so good that I sometimes feel like the story wins you over before you've even tried the wine... lucky for us all though, the story alone isn't where it ends, the wines are bloody amazing too!
Winemaker-owner Nacho Gonzalez started his work life as a Biologist, but it wasn't until he inherited a small, abandoned vineyard ('O Trancado') from his grandmother in 2012 that he sparked an interest in winemaking. He applied his scientific and research background to viticulture, and first set out to revitalise his family's vineyard (that had been planted in 1940).
The name La Perdida translates to 'the lost' and is a reference to the fact these wines are all from vineyards that were all at one stage abandoned and left to be 'found' by Nacho. Perdida is also an appropriate nickname given to anyone crazy enough to 1) take on gnarly old, abandoned vineyards and go to the effort of bringing them back to life, and 2) farm everything organically and entirely manually (i.e. by hand, no tractors) in a cool, wet, humid, maritime climate where farming organically is anything but easy.
From Nacho:
"Malas Uvas (Bad Grapes) is the union of two grapes hated by conventional managers. The Palomino (80%) and the Doña Blanca (20%) were very abundant varieties in the lands of Valdeorras, but considered not very noble to be representative of our territory. Malas Uvas was born from the fermentation of these two grapes, in 400L jar, aging for six months. It was not filtered or clarified."
