Comando G

Comando G was founded in 2008 by three Madrid-trained oenologists: Daniel Gómez Jiménez-Landi (Dani Landi), Fernando García Alonso, and Marc Isart. They had met as oenology students in Madrid around 2005 and converged again after graduation, each working at a different estate - Dani at his family's Bodegas Jiménez-Landi in Méntrida, Fernando at Marañones (after passing through Telmo Rodríguez and Raúl Pérez), Marc at Bernabeleva. They started chasing rumours of forgotten high-altitude parcels in the Sierra de Gredos - the mountain range west of Madrid where old Garnacha vines on granite had been growing almost unnoticed for a century. They started buying fruit, making wine, and naming it after a 1970s Japanese anime.

Comando G is the name of the hero team in La Batalla de los Planetas - the Spanish broadcast of Japan's Science Ninja Team Gatchaman (better known in English as Battle of the Planets or G-Force), which aired on Spanish television in the 1980s. The "G" also, conveniently, stands for Garnacha, Gredos, and granite. Marc Isart left the project around 2013 to focus on his own label, La Maldición, and on Bernabeleva. Dani and Fernando continued.

The Sierra de Gredos is not one of the famous Spanish appellations. DO Cebreros (Ávila) and Vinos de Madrid sit on its flanks; most of the serious old vines are in a handful of villages - Rozas de Puerto Real, Cadalso de los Vidrios, San Martín de Valdeiglesias, Cebreros, El Tiemblo, Navatalgordo, Navarrevisca, Villanueva de Ávila - at altitudes between roughly nine hundred and twelve hundred metres. Comando G rents and buys small parcels from old growers rather than farming a single estate; holdings sit at around twenty hectares of vines that typically run from fifty to eighty years old, planted on decomposed-granite sandy soils laced with quartz and slate. Biodynamic farming, in conversion.

The portfolio is strictly local: Garnacha for the reds, Albillo Real and Garnacha Blanca/Gris for the whites. The structural idea is borrowed from Burgundy - village, 1er cru, grand cru - built on single-parcel bottlings that express the granite in different registers.

• La Bruja de Rozas - village, Rozas de Puerto Real
• Rozas 1er Cru - village with a step up
• La Breña - 1er cru
• Las Umbrías, Las Iruelas, El Reventón, Tumba del Rey Moro, Rumbo al Norte - single-site grand crus
• El Tamboril Tinto - Garnacha from 1,230 metres
• El Tamboril Blanco - Garnacha Gris/Blanca field blend from the same high-altitude parcel
• Camino del Pilar - flor-aged Albillo Blanco from Cadalso de los Vidrios, raised in used Manzanilla casks

In the cellar: native yeasts, whole-cluster fermentation, aging in foudre, concrete, and demi-muid. Minimal sulphur, though not dogmatically "natural." The wines are elegant, translucent, low in alcohol - the antithesis of the extracted Garnacha style that dominated Spain in the nineties. Alongside Dani's own label, Bernabeleva, Marañones, and 4 Monos, Comando G is the reason Gredos is on the map.