2024 Belondrade 'Quinta Apolonia' Verdejo Rueda

Winemaker Notes:  Quinta Apolonia is the younger sister of the exceptional Belondrade y Lurton which is recognised as one of the finest Verdejos on the market. The estate’s second wine is a careful blend of wine which has been fermented in stainless steel tanks and wine which has been aged on the lees for 3 months. This helps to emphasise the distinctive varietal character with plenty of ripe peach and apricot notes while adding more complex hints of toast and sweet pastries from the lees ageing.

The winery was founded by Didier Belondrade who came to Rueda and was inspired to apply Burgundian winemaking techniques to create exceptional white wines from the local Verdejo grape. What began in the mid-1990s as a tiny project using rented vines and a small corner of a friend’s winery quickly blossomed into Belondrade’s own winery on the La Seca plateau some 760 metres above sea level. Here Belondrade has some 30 hectares of vines planted on pebbly soils over a sub-layer of clay and sand. The exact character of the soil varies greatly from plot to plot, allowing Belondrade to select the precise personality of each wine to reflect the vintage and the micro-terroirs of his vineyards.

CRITICAL ACCLAIM


Robert Parker's Wine Advocate - "The 2024 Quinta Apolonia shows signs of extreme youth. I think it's a mistake to release the wines this young, as they need a little bit of time in bottle to settle. It has a slightly reductive and medicinal nose, with thiolic notes and a core of white flowers, pollen and white fruit. This is a blend of Verdejo from different plots and some 5% other varieties. It's agile, elegant, nuanced and fresh, with some ripe flavors, 13.5% alcohol, a dry mouthfeel and a faint bitter twist in the finish. It fermented partly in used large barrels and the rest in stainless steel. 78,000 bottles produced. It was bottled in March 2025." (LG 5.25)