Producer Q&A: Adrianna Catena & Gearóid Lane, co-owners, El Reventón

By Andrew Catchpole

Published: 05 August, 2026

El Reventón’s Adrianna Catena and Gearóid Lane talk Andrew Catchpole through their remarkable Gredos-based project.

Can you tell us what El Reventón means?

AC: It’s basically a good night with your friends, a bit of an excessive night – literally something explosive, a blowout.

GL: We bought the El Reventón vineyard from Danny Landi [of Comando G fame] and we liked the name of the vineyard so much we called the wine El Reventón.

What brought you two – and third partner, winemaker Alejandro Vigil – together for this project?

AC: Ale and I started El Enemigo [in Mendoza, Argentina], and a few years later, around 2010, Ale went to Gredos and he came back super-excited, like, “Wow!, there’s something really special there – we should go make wine there.” I lived in Madrid at the time, so I went to check it out when my dad [Nicolás Catena Zapata] came over and we went to visit Danny Landi. Gredos is this really special place, there’s an energy, so I fell in love with it. But for years we couldn’t find anything, or only small plots [of vines], very separated from each other, and often owned by many members of the same family. So, nothing made for a realistic project, [but] after eight years, I met this guy…

GL: When I first met Adri I was doing my WSET Level 2. I used to be an engineer and was just retiring from that, and I was massively interested in wine. After a dinner we were the last two speaking and I said, “I’d love to do something in wine,” and she said, “F*** it, let’s do something together.” [Soon after], Alejandro got a call from Danny Landi saying that this quite big plot called La Reina was becoming available and Danny said, “If you want to turn it into a viable project, I’ve got a couple of vineyards as well that you may be able to work together.” The next day, Adri and I were on a plane...

You only work with Garnacha – what is the fascination?

AC: It seemed self-evident, when you look at Garnacha and Gredos, the high elevations, cool nights, very old bush vines, the soils, it has the potential to make wines with a profile like Burgundian Pinot Noir.

GL: And it’s low-ish-intervention winemaking, allowing the vineyards, the grapes, to speak. But I would emphasise that the viticulture and plant material here is very special.

You now have five vineyards in Gredos, what makes those sites special?

GL: We’ve the big vineyard, La Reina, which was planted in 1978 and has about 6.5ha of vines, and it’s 860m above sea level, mostly south facing, with granitic soil. The others have more slate and clay, more fertile soils. And then there’s El Reventón, I guess our flagship vineyard, because Danny had already been selling that as a single vineyard wine for quite a few years. It’s beautiful, tucked into the throat of the valley, almost 1,000m above sea level, with quartz rocks on slate. It has two parts to it, planted in 1943 and 1945. There are various orientations and [the grapes] mature nice and slowly. Everyone says it’s surprising how different all of the vineyards are, given how close everything is.

You’ve created an off-grid, solar winery, and are organic – why is sustainability so important?

GL: From the start everybody was aligned, believing that we need to make wine that people can drink without being concerned about the damage that it’s doing to the planet, without being concerned that every glass they take [is causing] a disaster.

Can you talk about the range of wines?

GL: Part of the idea was to create this kind of pyramid, and also, while La Reina is a lovely vineyard, you would never say the quality was quite as high as the higher-elevation single vineyards, so we’re putting out around 9,000 bottles of that. And then we have the No.17 wines, where we do buy some grapes, but from vineyards that we love. Then there’s the La Reina Cru Artesano and Vino de Pueblo wines, and the single vineyard wines El Reventón and San Gregorio.

Why is Garnacha/Grenache on the rise more globally?

GL: There is this Garnacha/Grenache revolution going on, and part of that is a trend in consumer appetites – what people are expecting from wine now, as opposed to 20 years ago. That change is towards fresher, lighter, sometimes lower-alcohol wines – but with acidity, wines that express a sense of place. And the other thing is how Garnacha, like Pinot Noir, is almost a ‘blank slate’ grape – they’re flexible to go in different directions, depending on how you grow them, prune them, pick them and vinify them. Our north star was pure and fresh, Burgundian in style too.

AC: Wine is like fashion, it’s cyclical, and a new generation moves on. Gredos has got its own way, and that is brilliant.

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