Bodegas Protos unveils DO Cigales rosé project

By Lisa Riley

Published: 23 September, 2020

Bodegas Protos has made its first foray into DO Cigales with a new winery specifically designed to produce rosé.

The producer said it began construction of the new winery in Cubillas de Santa Maria – the site of Cigales’ most emblematic soils – in 2018, completing the winery in 2020.

Custom-built for rosé winemaking, the winery is Protos most technical winery design to date. It forms the ‘pink’ addition to Protos’ estates in Ribera del Duero and Rueda which specialise in red and white wines respectively.

Designed to make “high quality” rosé, the new winery features an on-site laboratory, a gravity-flow system for grape reception, a nitrogen generator to displace oxygen with inert gas, a roller separation table to remove plant debris, tubular exchangers for cooling grapes and must to 8°C and separate vinification of must according to quality, colour, variety and parcel.

Bodegas Protos said it saw a "great opportunity” to present “really good quality rosé wines” via the combination of DO Cigales old vines and "ideal climate”.

“We have invested in a region that has a long tradition of making rosés, with great terroirs and soils – very similar to the Valladolid part of Ribera del Duero,” said Carlos Villar, director general at Bodegas Protos.

“Cigales permits a wide variety of grapes in rosé production, including red Tempranillo, Garnacha and Syrah, plus white Albillo, Verdejo and Sauvignon Blanc. This allows our oenologists to blend the best characteristics from French and indigenous varieties to create unique and complex rosé wines."

The inaugural vintage of Protos Cigales rosé will be released onto the market in January 2021, with the wine made available in all of the 100 countries worldwide where Protos’ wines are currently sold.

Villar said: “We harvested early to preserve maximum aromatic potential in the wines, rather than deep colours; this has been an optimal vintage, with great health and balance between the sugars and acidity of our different grape varieties – providing fresh and highly aromatic wines."

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