Bodega Cerron (Stratum Wines) as told by Luis Gutierrez of the Wine Advocate

We hugely appreciate our Thatcher's Imports producers getting love from the critics, and Luis Gutierrez of the Wine Advocate has been making the rounds in Spain, recently revisiting Bodega Cerron (Stratum Wines) near the peak of the Earth - Fuente Alamo, Jumilla (SP). 

Luis did a wonderful job of illustrating what many of you have found out already with the 2023 wines we released last year - the incredible if brilliantly tenuous balance of brightness and extraction that the ancient, own-rooted vines provided following the hardest vintage (2022) in a generation.

Further amping the excitement (if days after our first allocation of the 2024 Bodega Cerron wines...sorry) of the new release, he's got incredible things to share about the inbound 2024s...enjoy the read!!

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Bodega Cerrón - Stratum Wines is one of the most exciting new names in Spain in the last few years. I visited some of their vineyards and the soils they are preparing to plant—they're replanting in places that had been vineyards in the past—and previewed some of their forthcoming wines, not only tasting the current offerings. They think 2025 is their finest vintage to date. They had 120 liters of rain one month before the harvest, which changed everything The wines are super approachable, but they do have more of everything. They have changed the press to a vertical one, and the pumps are peristaltic and, when possible, use gravity.

There was a change in their wines after the experience with 2022, a very warm and dry year, the most challenging to date, which was followed by very good vintages, culminating with their finest, 2025. Coming after the most difficult vintage ever, 2023 delivered low yields. Autumn and winter were very dry, but there was a rainy spring, which was a little tropical with lots of humidity. They had mildew, but the grapes were larger in size, despite the low yields. They destemmed 100% of the reds, as they already had fine-boned wines without the help from the stems. The wines are lighter but narrow and textured. Despite the low yields of the vintage, they increased the number of bottles in the majority of their wines because they increased the vigor of their plants through compost and managing the soils. 2024 had almost the opposite weather, with snow and 200+ liters of rain during the spring and a completely dry summer but with milder temperatures and no heat waves. They used 10% full clusters in everything to add more tension, and the wines have concentration, depth and good acidity with a limestone structure.

The range is established by now. The entry-level range, Matas Altas, in red and white, saw a jump in quality in 2024.

The rest of the range are single-vineyard wines, one white and three reds, and for now, there are no plans to bottle anything new. La Servil is always floral, Yesares is vibrant and salty and Cerrico is super salty. 

Their finest red, La Calera del Escaramujo, is elegant and nuanced, and the vineyard it comes from is now delivering better yields and has more vigor; in 2025, they produced2,500 liters of this wine, as this is the vineyard where they source the plant material to plant new vines, and it has seen an improvement, so the larger volume means they can now age the wine in foudre instead of barrels. I also tasted some 2024s, like the stunning white El Cerrico, which is still aging in oak.

They are slowly increasing the time in oak for all their wines and have the ambition to maybe reach three years of élevage, ideally without increasing the prices. The 2023s mature for more years; in white, they are going for extended élevage à la Ganevat or like the Riserva style from Italy. 2023 is a refined vintage, floral and elegant, while in 2024, they see more structure and would like to increase the time in oak to 30 or 36 months and also more time in bottle. It's the way.

All their vineyards are certified organic, and most wines are also biodynamic certified by Demeter, only the white Matas Altas is pending the certification because some of those plots were the last ones they bought. They have 50+ hectares of ungrafted vines, all in their village. But the new plantings and the replacement of dead vines are grafted, so the Matas Altas range has some 30% of grapes from grafted vines. When the new plantings in Yesares come into production, they will decide if they want to bottle a separate wine or if they will blend it with the old vines. But the project aims to save the old ungrafted vineyards in their village. They produce about 80,000 bottles, and they don't want to grow in quantity, only in quality.

Published: Feb 12, 2026