His son Manuel Esteban Martín remembers… we started coming here in the summers when I was four years old. Little by little, this attachment to the countryside began to permeate me and my sisters Susana and María Ángeles. At 18, I began studying agricultural engineering. My sister, who is two years older than me, had also begun her studies . My father was a visionary and understood from the beginning that it was necessary to listen to and learn from professionals, people who had been in the area for a long time, from Pedrosa, from Valbuena… lifelong winegrowers. He took advice and travelled around the Ribera del Duero looking for different clones of Tempranillo. That work and advice is one of the keys to the good plants we have today.

The first vintage of Montebaco Crianza was launched in 1994, with a production of 33,000 bottles, a classic Ribera wine… I was about 17 years old and I remember above all the excitement of my family, of having the wine, of sharing it with friends and family. That is when I began to develop an interest in the world of wine, the countryside and agriculture. They were good summers… we naturally got involved in the project because we were really passionate about it.

The Monte Alto Estate is one of the historic estates in the province of Valladolid, dating back to the time of the monasteries, when the Cistercian Order arrived in Spain, bringing with it the culture of wine. The Monastery of Santa María de Valbuena is located very close to the Estate, in San Bernardo. Later, with the confiscation of Mendizábal, it passed into the hands of the Marquis Alonso Pesquera, one of the largest landowners in the area.

It was in 1981 when the married couple Manuel Esteban Casado and Mª Ángeles Martín de la Rosa bought the Monte Alto estate, which has an exceptional location between Valbuena and Pesquera de Duero. They had a clear vision of converting this agricultural and livestock estate into a wine estate where they could devote themselves to producing wines of the highest quality.

Manuel Esteban Casado was a great entrepreneur, president of Real Valladolid and president of the Association of Hunters and Fishermen of Valladolid, and he was also very involved with university sport. He had always enjoyed the world of wine and passed on his enthusiasm for this activity to his family. After some experiments, twenty hectares of the Tinto Fino variety were planted in 1987.

His son Manuel Esteban Martín remembers… we started coming here in the summers when I was four years old. Little by little, this attachment to the countryside began to permeate me and my sisters Susana and María Ángeles. At 18, I began studying agricultural engineering. My sister, who is two years older than me, had also begun her studies . My father was a visionary and understood from the beginning that it was necessary to listen to and learn from professionals, people who had been in the area for a long time, from Pedrosa, from Valbuena… lifelong winegrowers. He took advice and travelled around the Ribera del Duero looking for different clones of Tempranillo. That work and advice is one of the keys to the good plants we have today.

The first vintage of Montebaco Crianza was launched in 1994, with a production of 33,000 bottles, a classic Ribera wine… I was about 17 years old and I remember above all the excitement of my family, of having the wine, of sharing it with friends and family. That is when I began to develop an interest in the world of wine, the countryside and agriculture. They were good summers… we naturally got involved in the project because we were really passionate about it.

César Muñoz has been the technical director since 1997 and has been key to the growth of the project, always with a clear commitment to excellence. Currently, Patricia Benítez is in charge of this good work.

It is the people, the love and effort with which we work, the location, the selection of old Tempranillo clones from the area and the work from the beginning, which give the quality of our wines.

Montebaco is a well-designed winery: spacious and equipped with advanced winemaking technology. All of this is in a renovated one-story building that once housed the dairy farm and several of the farm’s agricultural outbuildings.