We bought a vineyard 300 meters above the village, at 1100 meters above sea level. It's a lifelong dream come true. Wijnand's father was a wine importer, so Wijnand grew up with a deep love of wine. The Dutch word for wine is 'wijn,' and though his parents insist his father's profession had nothing to do with choosing his name, nomen est omen.
When we were planning our 2022 wedding, we wanted to serve local wine. We tasted wines from all our neighbors and fell in love with Jose Carlotta's red. We decided to buy an entire 300-liter wooden barrel - not because we expected to drink that much at the wedding, but because we loved the idea of enjoying this wine long after the celebration.
A few weeks later, we went back to Jose's small winery to bottle our wedding wine ourselves. That's when Jose dropped some news: this would be his last vintage. He was retiring. We were crushed - the man who made the best wine in Polopos was calling it quits! That got us thinking: what if we could take over his vineyard?
Jose was open to selling to us, but we didn't have that kind of money lying around. We asked if he'd hold onto the vineyard for us while we pruned and maintained the vines in the meantime. He agreed, and we finally bought the vineyard in 2024. The wine we'd chosen to celebrate our love had somehow found its way into our lives permanently!
Vendimia 2025
“Oh, how beautiful that barren rocky isle of Alborán seems to the young heart, how gently the breeze caresses a face bronzed by the tropical sun. The impression a landscape makes on us depends more on our own feelings than on its true form, and so Alborán seemed to me - in the company of dear friends, beneath the blue summer sky and the calm of the sea - like a dream of happiness and joy.”
Al-borani was the nickname of a Tunisian pirate who terrorized the Spanish coasts on behalf of the Ottoman Empire. The name means "thunder storm" in Turkish, and he earned this moniker through his ruthless attacks. He operated from an island situated between Morocco and Spain that still bears his name today: Alborán.
Pirates like Al Borani were the reason the Spanish population lived in the mountains rather than along the coast. After the fall of the Emirate of Granada, and especially after the expulsion of the entire Spanish Muslim population, life near the water became perilous. The banished Muslims who turned to piracy had been born and raised in Spain and knew exactly where to find the most valuable targets. What's more, they were utterly determined to inflict pain on the new regime and the Christian population.
The vineyards of Bodegas Alborán overlook the Sea of Alborán from the safety of 1,100 meters above sea level. Down on the coast, you can just make out the Torre de Cautor, a watchtower built to warn the interior when Moors were spotted offshore (“hay moros en la costa”). If you draw an imaginary line from the vineyard through the tower and extend it to the horizon, you'll land almost exactly on the Island of Alborán.
Al-Borani wasn't the only one who could strike like lightning. Red wine from the Contraviesa mountain range, where our vineyard is located, is bold, dark, and unapologetic. At this altitude, the grapes grow closer to the sun, which shines here more than 300 days a year. At night, temperatures drop rapidly at this elevation, providing the grapes with essential cooling that gives the wine its complexity and the acidity needed to balance the dark fruit flavors.