The Winery

For centuries, the Aljarafe has cultivated an intimate relationship with the vine. Phoenicians, Romans, Muslims and Christians found in these lands a distinctive way of making wine, shaped by the climate, the landscape and varieties such as Garrido Fino, which originated in this region.

From here, with Seville as its gateway to the world, the wines of the Aljarafe crossed the Atlantic and accompanied some of the great voyages to the Americas.

Góngora is part of this winemaking heritage.

For two centuries, time has been shared at Góngora. Older wines welcome younger ones, which bring fresh vitality before continuing their journey together among oak casks.

This is how the soleras and criaderas work: a patient balance between different ages that allows each wine to retain its character over time.

At Góngora, every wine carries within it something of those that came before.

Most likely built in the 16th century, Góngora’s beam, screw and quintal press is the oldest active wine press in the world, and has been declared an Asset of Cultural Interest as a monument.

Seventeen metres of wood, weighing fifteen tonnes, and a mechanism that still follows the same principle of leverage with which it was conceived centuries ago. At every harvest, its beam is raised once again to exert up to 75,000 kilos of pressure on the bed of grapes, extracting the must.

Cellar masters, cellar workers, coopers, venenciadores and lagareros have passed down, generation after generation, a knowledge that lives not only in books: it is found in the gesture, the eye and a way of understanding wine that can only be learned through practice.

That expertise also lives on in Góngora’s wines: in their character, their ageing and a way of making wine that continues to speak the same language of time.

In Góngora’s oldest casks rests part of its memory. Centuries-old soleras, wines that have passed through generations and batches more than two centuries old form an archive that is not kept on paper, but in wood.

The tradition of the house even preserves the memory of a cask said to have crossed the Atlantic when the wines of the Aljarafe travelled from Seville to the New World.

Everything wine cannot tell on its own.

Documents, objects, stories and pieces preserved over centuries complete the memory of a winery that has never stopped being alive.