Bodegas Ponce
Juan Antonio Ponce, the man who put Manchuela and Bobal on the map.
Bodegas Ponce is the project of Juan Antonio Ponce, who set up his own winery in 2005 aged just 23. He’d done the groundwork first: enrolled at the Requena wine school at 14, went to France to soak up biodynamics, and spent years as Telmo Rodríguez’s right-hand man at his wine company. He came back to his native Manchuela with all that behind him, determined to do things his own way.
His obsession is place and native grapes. He farms biodynamically, keeps intervention in the cellar to a minimum with sulphur at rock bottom, and has turned Bobal (that bulk-wine grape nobody took seriously) into single-vineyard wines drunk across half the world. He also rescues Albilla, Moravia Agria, Garnacha and Monastrell. If Manchuela now means grower wine, a good chunk of the credit carries his name.