Why it matters
The producer
Dionisio de Nova is the fifth generation of a farming family rooted in Valdepeñas, in the southern half of Castilla-La Mancha. The family has grown grapes and made wine continuously since the mid-nineteenth century. When Dionisio took charge in 1996, he converted the entire bodega to ecological production, removed sulfites and filtration from the winemaking process, and began fermenting every wine in clay tinajas with indigenous yeast. The wine range he built around those choices is called EGO Vinum, and it sits outside any D.O. framework, labelled as vinos de la tierra.
What makes the estate unusual is not simply the organic certification, but the convergence of methods: clay vessels that predate oak barrels in Spanish wine history, yeasts cultivated from the vineyard itself, the lunar calendar applied to both vineyard management and cellar work, and a refusal to intervene with additives at any point in production. Those commitments have been in place for thirty years.
Place and vineyards
Where the wines begin
Valdepeñas sits in the southern reaches of Castilla-La Mancha, in Ciudad Real province, on a flat, sun-baked plateau that has produced large volumes of red wine for most of the twentieth century. The D.O. Valdepeñas appellation built its reputation on high-yield Tempranillo and the kind of output that filled bulk markets across Spain and abroad. La Bodega de las Estrellas operates on 30 hectares within that landscape but deliberately outside the D.O. system, classifying its wines as vinos de la tierra, a category that allows independent growers to bottle under their own rules rather than conform to appellation specifications.
In the cellar
Vineyards and cellar
The 30 hectares are farmed without synthetic chemistry, and vineyard timing follows the lunar calendar, a practice associated with biodynamic viticulture in which planting, pruning, harvesting, and racking are aligned with lunar phases. The belief behind the practice is that lunar cycles affect soil moisture, sap movement, and fermentation behaviour. Whether or not that causal claim is measurable, every cellar and vineyard decision follows the lunar calendar.
Fermentation happens exclusively in clay tinajas, the traditional Spanish earthenware vessels used for wine storage and fermentation long before oak barrels became standard in Spanish cellars. Tinajas are porous, allowing very gentle micro-oxygenation without the flavour extraction of oak. They maintain low, stable temperatures during fermentation and do not impose any wood character on the wine. Fermentation runs on indigenous yeast drawn from the vineyard itself, with no commercial yeast additions. Temperatures are kept low throughout. The wines are bottled without filtration and without sulfites.
Wines to know
The range in view
The EGO Vinum range is compact, built entirely around Tempranillo, and unified by clay amphora fermentation, indigenous yeast, and a no-additive philosophy.
EGO Vinum Ancestral Rosado: 100% Tempranillo, produced by the ancestral method (also called pétillant naturel). Fermentation begins in clay tinajas and continues in bottle, trapping natural CO2. No filtration, no sulfites. The wine is salmon-pink with a nacreous, pearlescent colour that catches light differently from conventional still or sparkling rosados. The mousse is fine and persistent rather than aggressive. Wild strawberry and fresh floral notes on the nose; soft, gently sweet on the palate with a light, friendly finish.
A useful way in
A bottle to begin with
Start with EGO Vinum Ancestral Rosado. It is 100% Tempranillo, fermented in clay tinajas with indigenous yeast, bottled with live fermentation still running, and sealed with the remaining sugar and natural gas intact. No filtration, no sulfites, no intervention after bottling. The nacreous pink colour and the slow-rising fine bubbles make it immediately unlike a conventionally made sparkling rosé. In the glass it is soft and lightly sweet, with wild strawberry and a clean floral lift, and the mousse is gentle enough to drink alongside food rather than before it.