The Jesús del Perdón-Bodegas Yuntero Cooperative closes the 2019 harvest with a production of 104.3 million kilos of excellent quality grapes. The campaign, which has had peak reception days for grapes of up to 4.4 million kilos, has lasted 51 days. It began on August 19 with the entry into the winery of the Chardonnay grape variety and ended last Friday, October 11, with the Airén variety.
Production has dropped by almost 30% compared to the previous harvest, the year in which Bodegas Yuntero reached its historical record with the reception of 146 million grapes. This decrease is caused "by the enormous drought that we have suffered in our area, with rainfall since January of 149 liters/m3, the depletion of the vineyard, and the high productions that were achieved in 2018," says Ramón Alcarazo , manager of Bodegas Yuntero.
Grapes of excellent quality and in perfect sanitary condition
These same climatological factors have led to the grapes from this vintage being of excellent quality, "with an increase in graduation, as well as the intensity of the colorant in the reds, and they are in perfect health," adds Alcarazo.
Of the 104.3 million kilos of grapes harvested at Bodegas Yuntero, 76.6 million correspond to white grapes: Airén, Macabeo, Parellada, Verdejo, Chardonnay, Sauvignon Blanc, Moscatel, Viognier and Pedro Ximenez.
Red production amounts to 27.7 million kilos of the varieties: Tempranillo, Garnacha, Garnacha Tintorera, Merlot, Syrah, Cabernet, Petit Verdot and Graciano. As a novelty, the red variety called Pampana Blanca has been incorporated into this campaign. Of the total production, 44% corresponds to the white Airén and 56% to varietal grapes, with the majority variety in reds being Tempranillo or Cencibel (13%).
All these varieties are produced in both conventional and organic farming. In the 2019 vintage, 12% of the total grapes harvested come from organic vineyards. Bodegas Yuntero was a pioneer in 1992, in Castilla-La Mancha, in the production of wines from this type of agriculture. In addition, since 2018 its organic wines (Mundo de Yuntero) have had the certification seal for vegans granted by the European Vegetarian Union (EVU).
Quality, internationalization and commercial positioning
The main axes of the commercial strategy of Bodegas Yuntero for the current 2019-2020 campaign are investment in quality, internationalization and the commercial positioning of bottled wines.
The Bodegas Yuntero Cooperative, made up of 854 members and with a total of 8,600 hectares of vineyards to its credit, exports its wines to 18 countries: “we are going to continue betting on the internationalization of the company. Our expectations are positive due to the rise in sales prices, which are motivated in turn by a decrease in the production of the harvest in practically all the European productive countries", affirms the manager of the Ramón Alcarazo Cooperative.
"With the investments we are making over the last year (ten million euros in 2019 to incorporate new machinery, installations, tanks and cold equipment) -adds Alcarazo- we have managed to optimize all the must production and fermentation processes. All this will lead to an improvement in the company's productivity and in the quality of our products”.
Bodegas Yuntero is also making a strong commitment to the marketing of bottled wines: “we are developing different strategies, increasing the sales network and hiring new workers to increase sales of our bottled wines. To this end, we are also finishing the construction of a new 4,500 square meter bottling warehouse, which will have two bottling lines and a third exclusively for the Bag in Box format, an air-conditioned warehouse for the perfect preservation of more than two million bottles, and a new shop for the sale and tasting of our wines”, details Ramón Alcarazo.
Bodegas Yuntero's bottled wines are marketed under the EPILOGO brands; YUNTERO; GUIDE GUIDE; MUNDO DE YUNTERO (Ecological) and the low-grade sparkling POÉTICA.
