4 Monos Viticultores

4 Monos Viticultores is four madrileño friends, three from the city and one from Cadalso, who met hiking in the Sierra de Gredos: Javier García and Laura Robles, husband and wife and the winemakers, David Velasco, who runs the numbers, and David Moreno, the one from Cadalso de los Vidrios whose family vines started it all. All four are engineers by training and all four kept their day jobs; Javier García has worked as technical director at Jiménez-Landi in Méntrida and as consultant at Viña Somoza in Valdeorras (the US importer calls him Jiménez-Landi's former head winemaker), and is the brother of Fernando García of Marañones and Comando G. The project began when David Moreno asked Javier to help save a 0.35 ha parcel of old Albillo Real his family had planted in Cadalso and a relative wanted to pull out; the accounts differ on whether it was the grandfather's or the great-grandfather's planting and whether an uncle or an aunt wanted it gone. The first Garnacha followed in 2010 and, by their own admission to El Español, the first wine was terrible. The bodega is at Ronda de la Sangre 19 in Cadalso de los Vidrios, with two permanent staff and about 35 seasonal hands.

The vineyards lie in the San Martín de Valdeiglesias subzone of DO Vinos de Madrid, in Cadalso de los Vidrios, Cenicientos and San Martín itself, on granite-derived soils with more or less sandy topsoil, dry-farmed and worked organically without certification, by choice. The size depends on who is counting and when: 7 ha farmed of which 5 owned, plus 5 ha tended by growers in Cenicientos, per Spanish Wine Lover around 2017; 9 ha directly managed across some 22 micro-parcels per El Español in 2025; 14 ha of which 5 owned per the Spanish distributor Alma Vinos Únicos in 2024. Altitudes run from roughly 720 to 970 m for the Cadalso parcels, with Javier García quoting 800 to 1,100 m for the whole. Old bush-vine Garnacha and Albillo Real are the core, with some old Cariñena in the reds; the Albillo comes from vines over 95 years old in three Cadalso sites, and the Molino Quemado Garnacha parcel in San Martín, bought in 2010, from vines over 75.

The reds are made from whole, undestemmed, foot-trodden bunches, fermented in concrete, small steel tanks or a large oak tina depending on the wine, with minimal extraction and elevage in used 500 and 600 l barrels and foudres so that no oak shows; Javier García says he started with a Bordeaux idea of concentration and turned to freshness after Loire, Jura and Burgundy, with harvest date as the main lever. Output is around 45,000 bottles a year, 35% of it exported to the United States. The range is built like Burgundy: the regional GR-10 in red and white, named for the long-distance footpath that crosses two of their vineyards and, from 2016, the successor to the old entry-level 4 Monos tinto; three village wines, Cien Lanzas (Cenicientos), Aguja del Fraile (Cadalso) and Tierra de Luna (San Martín); and the single-parcel La Danza del Viento collection, Molino Quemado, Arroyo de las Ánimas and La Isilla in Garnacha plus an Albillo Real, about 800 bottles a year across the collection per El Español. Labels now read Vino de la Sierra de Gredos over the DO mention.