Retail Team | November 11, 2023
Daniel Landi has helped achieve a revolution in Spanish winemaking by doing things that would have been thought impossible in years past.
He has plumbed the spiritual depths of Garnacha – a grape once considered too rustic to merit connoisseurship – and produced expressions of the variety so vibrant, tense, and delicate, that they’re frequently compared to Burgundy and the old-school masterpieces of Hermitage.
Along with a small cadre of enterprising winemakers, Daniel has transformed the raw, rocky landscape of Sierra de Gredos into a cause célèbre for the wine world – a place now talked about as one of Europe’s most exciting terroirs.
Here, amidst isolated old-vine vineyards, framed by wind-beaten boulders and scrubby mountainsides, he has pursued the kind of painstaking, biodynamically-informed farming and vinification that many wineries consider cost-prohibitive. Daniel accomplishes these feats with friends like Fernando Garcia – his partner in the acclaimed Comando G project – through sweat equity and determination. Join Sotheby’s Wine in exploring this remarkable selection from a Spanish pioneer with an additional limited-time offer.
The 2021 Las Uvas de la Ira is the entry-level bottling, sourced from several granitic parcels near the village of El Real de San Vicente. It nonetheless receives the same meticulous attention as Daniel’s single-vineyard cuvées and shows the muscular depth of 60-year-old vines.
The Cantos del Diablo hails from a 0.35-hectare plot that Daniel inherited, where 70-year-old vines, a cool microclimate, and sandy soils yield a pale Garnacha of fine-boned finesse and brooding, ethereal aromatics.
The Las Iruelas cuvée, available here from both the 2019 and 2020 vintages, is regarded by many as one of Spain’s premier bottlings. From a complex mix of soils with a higher proportion of quartz and slate, the tannins are extremely fine-grained, almost fragile. With its floral fragrance and limber mineral structure, the resemblance to Northern Rhône’s best is unmistakable – yet, as with all of Daniel’s wines, it boasts a pedigree all its own.
