Bodegas Protos Verdejo, Rueda

• Vintage: 2020
  
• Origin: Rueda, Spain
  
• Taste guide: A Verdejo with great freshness and perfectly balanced acidity. Straw yellow with green hues, clean and bright. Powerful, fruity nose, with notes of green apple, citrus and tropical fruit, white flowers, herbs and fennel. Very fresh in the mouth with good acidity, intense flavour, fruity, balanced, complex, with a long finish. Unoaked but aged on its lees for a few months giving it a softer finish.
• Food match: White fish, tuna, sushi, seafood rice, paella & pasta
• 75cl - 13% - Natural Cork Opening

Protos was founded in 1927 and was the first winery in the wine region known as Ribera del Duero, being its first name precisely that one: Ribera del Duero. In the early 1980s, coinciding with the creation of the Regulatory Council of the area, the winery changed its original name to Bodegas Protos (from the Greek protos, which means first). It ceded its first name to the Regulatory Council, authorising it to use that name to identify the Ribera del Duero denomination of origin. Since then, the Council has been responsible for watching over the quality of the area's wines.

The company experienced very rapid growth at that time, and the first space problems arose. The project continued to develop until the acquisition, in 1986, of a new winemaking cellar in Anguix (Burgos) surrounded by high-quality old vineyards. After multiple modifications, this winery would become the Protos High Technology Winemaking Centre in 2019.

In 2004, Protos started building a new winery in Peñafiel, equipped with the latest technology and connected to the old Bodegas Protos facilities constructed in 1970 at the foot of the Peñafiel Castle. This new winery was designed by the architect Richard Rogers (Pritzker Architecture Prize) and stands out for its roof, made up of five vaults that imitate barrels rising from the earth. On the other hand, the old winery has an impressive ageing cellar with more than two kilometres of galleries dug into the mountain's bowels.

Retails at £11 up to as much as £14 at other merchants.

£8.49 here represents great value as a Bin End.