Wines

Bodegas Julian Chivite

Cintruénigo

Chivite

Winemaker: Fernando Chivite

Founded in Navarra in 1647, Bodegas Julián Chivite is the oldest wine-producing dynasty in Spain. Fernando Chivite, the eleventh generation, is keeping this family-owned producer at the forefront of Spanish wine quality, partly through embracing ‘technology’ of the past. The organic vineyard project at the Senorio de Arinzano estate (in conjunction with the World Wildlife Fund), has seen a vineyard development of total quality based on environmentally concerned management of agriculture – hand-weeding, pruning, leaf-plucking and picking – through to the use of only organic materials and processes in the gravity-feed winery. Old vine material from the estate’s original vineyards is also providing propagation material for the new estates of Legardeta (adjacent to Senorio de Arinzano), La Horra in Ribera del Duero and Vina Salceda in Rioja.

The Navarra vineyards at Cintruénigo are the anchor of the Chivite’s production, the Gran Feudo range of wines. The vineyards are planted to predominantly Tempranillo and Garnacha, with minor plantings of Chardonnay, Cabernet Sauvignon, Merlot and Muscat à Petit Grains with an average vine age of twenty years.

But it is with Rosado that Chivite really shines, particularly for an Australian summer. The style is ethereal pink, deliciously crisp and dry, with jubey Grenache flavours. One of the 100 Wines You Should Be Drinking, according to Matt Skinner in The Juice 2008.

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Wines
2007 Gran Feudo Rosado DO screwcap
2004 Gran Feudo Crianza DO
2003 Gran Feudo Reserva DO