Bala Roja 2023

It is in the region of Los Duques and Las Monjas – small towns located 80 kilometers west of the coastal city of Valencia – that the Romero family has been growing grains and almonds, but also grapes, which year after year have always been sold to the local cooperative. It is important to note that the forty hectares of vineyards that make up the family’s estate have always been cultivated organically, without the use of pesticides or herbicides, if for no other reason than the local climate, dry and with very low annual rainfall, is not prone to the typical diseases that usually attack grapevines.

This family ritual remained unchanged for four generations until Verónica Romero, with her restless and curious mind, dared to break with tradition. Verónica began by studying Agricultural Engineering and Techniques at the University of Valencia, and subsequently completed her academic training by earning a degree in Oenology from the same institution. In the eight years following the completion of her academic training, while working as an engineer, she also used small plots of the estate’s vineyards to develop her personal ideas about the art of winemaking, with the clear intention of becoming the first person in the family to produce her own wine.

Verónica took the decisive step in 2017 when she decided to restore a Tempranillo vineyard, followed in 2018 by the rehabilitation of a small vineyard planted with a native white variety that was, unfortunately, nearly disappeared: tardana (as its name suggests, this is a grape variety that ripens much later than others). She then informed her family of her desire to begin producing her own wines, selecting three hectares of bush-trained vines, ranging in age from 40 to 90 years, and mostly consisting of native grape varieties. In the first year, 2020, she produced 2,000 bottles; in the second, she made 4,000 bottles; in the third, she reached 6,000, a number that is expected to increase in the 2023 harvest. Her goal is to reach 12,000 bottles annually, and each wine is single-vineyard, meaning each wine is made from grapes sourced from the same plot.

For Verónica, making wine as naturally as possible has never been in question, since the wines to which she has always felt an aesthetic affinity are precisely natural wines. It is, therefore, this principle that guides her work in the winery. In addition to not adding any chemicals to her wines, she strives to make them in the style she most enjoys drinking (in reds, for example, vinification is always done with minimal extraction and short aging, as she seeks elegance over power and alcohol content). She only uses oak for the red wine she produces from the bobal grape, although in 2023 she plans to make a wine from this variety in amphorae. All other wines are made in stainless steel. But even from a brief conversation with Verónica, it’s easy to see that what truly fulfills her is working outdoors, tending to the vineyards. Her talent lies in the way she expresses Valencian identity and culture through her wines.