We knew Pedro Balda, since 2009, a year after he started his small and personal project in San Vicente de la Sonsierra, in La Rioja (no more than 1200 bottles / year); Andres Conde fell in love with the wines, who bought them for his restaurant La Bodega Cigaleña.

Recently, during one of our trips to speak with Abel Mendoza, the idea of involving Pedro Balda in the Unicorn project came up.

His response was very fast, with you Andrés, without any problem. So we quickly arranged a visit to taste their wines again, it was an immediate crush, which marvels their 2014, 2015, 2016.

We agreed with him to distribute it at a national and international level. Pedro had historically sold his production to Japan, Brazil and Spain to Celler de Can Roca, to which he joined a great relationship of friendship and admiration with Pitu Roca.

For the vinification of the wines, we work without the addition of sulphites (ZERO SULPHITES) in any of the points of the process. It is about manifesting the character of the grape, without any additive that conditions it. Nor are yeasts, bacteria or any other agent that can accelerate fermentations added. His way of working is simply to let everything happen naturally, undoubtedly a pioneer in Rioja in 2009.

Pedro makes two wines, the so-called Harvest and the Selected Harvest.

Selected Vintage:

Clusters with different characteristics emerge from the same vineyard and the same vine. The less compact clusters, smaller and full of the character that Tempranillo expresses, are chosen one by one to create the “Selected Harvest”. The other bunches that remain on the vines are then harvested to make the "Harvest".

Harvest:

Of the most compact bunches that are kept fresher and with less concentration, the “Harvest” is made by mechanical destemming.

We consider Pedro Balda a pioneer of natural wine in Spain, more in an area like Rioja, he currently coordinates his personal project with his work as Head of R&D at Vintae and as a professor at the University of La Rioja.