El Grillo y la Luna

El Grillo y la Luna began with a couple of families, that worked the land of Barbastro, enjoying an evening outdoors.  While enjoying a nice evening drinking wine and listening to the sound of crickets, they decided to pursue a dream of theirs to produce wine that reflected the soul of the land they came from.  They knew very well the land and how to work it.  They knew that a good product begins in the land and they felt comfortable taking care of the that part.  All they needed was the help of someone that shared their vision to transform the grapes into wine.  They turned to famed enologist from Bordeaux Michel Rolland and it turned out to be a match made in heaven.

The cellar is quick to point that patience is the pillar on which their quality is buttressed on.  This is something that they have learned after working the land for generations.  They also know that there is no substitute for hard work.  With this in mind, all the vineyards of this cellar are worked by hand.  Harvest is done manually and only when they believe that the grapes are ready to be harvested.  Later, grapes are hand-picked before starting the process of fermentation.   El Grillo y la Luna is one of the smallest cellars in Somontano, but they have managed their size very well and divided their land to produce two lines of wines.  Their entry wines, labeled 12 Lunas.  All these wines show the sophistication of a producer obsessed with attention to details.   The other brand is Grillo and variations of thing related to grasshoppers: hop hop, cri-cri, etc.

 We think it is worth now focusing a little bit on the name of this producer.  It is simple, yet very deep, we think. The grasshopper and the moon, represent all that this producer fights for every day:  respect for the land and everything around it.  Grasshoppers are just one tine piece of all the chain that works in symbiosis to produce a great product: grapes in this case.  The moon is a symbol of the cycles that need to be observed to work the land.  El Grillo y la Luna grows its grapes following organic practices.

We talked about attention to detail and all you have to do is look at the design of their bottles.  All the designs are simple, yet very elegant and tell a lot of what we have described.   The 12 Lunas design is a hand, which represents how they select their grapes, but above all it is a homage to the women that collaborate in the production of their wines.