The Grandmother's Vineyard, the Arrowheads & the Last Garnacha of Serranillos
In 2009, Alejandro López Martín — a young graduate in viticulture and oenology from Madrid's Polytechnic University — took charge of his grandmother Mercedes' Garnacha vineyard, planted in 1940: the last vineyard left in Serranillos del Valle, a town whose entire wine heritage urban development had erased. What began in a garage is now a bodega in a rented nave of El Álamo's old cooperative, farming under seven hectares of rescued old vines across five towns and two provinces, and making nine natural wines — each vineyard vinified separately, with its own yeasts, under the moon, in clay tinajas over 200 years old. Solo uva. Nothing more.
Origin — The Last Vineyard of a Town That Paved Over Its Wine
Serranillos del Valle, southwest of Madrid, once grew vines like every town in the comarca. Then came the urban development boom — and it erased the town's entire viticultural heritage. One vineyard survived: the family plot of Alejandro's grandmother Mercedes, Garnacha Tinta planted in 1940. In 2009, Alex — trained in viticulture and oenology at the Universidad Politécnica de Madrid — decided that this jewel would not disappear on his watch. He made his first wine in a garage. Then he conditioned his grandmother's house as an improvised, provisional bodega.
Then the bureaucracy struck: when Alex applied for a licence, the town council was forced to deny it — an old regulation prohibits winemaking activity in Serranillos del Valle. Two roads remained: abandon the dream, or find another town. He chose the second, moving only as far as neighbouring El Álamo — itself a historic wine town whose great Cooperativa Nuestra Señora de la Soledad once produced more than seven million litres a year — and rented one of the cooperative's old naves. That nave is the Bodega Punta de Flecha today: a small family bodega standing as a bulwark of traditional, ancestral viticulture in the Community of Madrid, surrounded by the cooperative's ghost.
The name, Alex explains, is a double memory of his grandmother and his childhood: "Mucho en Punta de Flecha parece recordar a la abuela… el vino huele a ese sueño de nieto orgulloso y sabe a aquellas 'puntas de flecha' que de niño buscaba entre los terrones de arcilla y sílice cuando jugaba a ser el 'bueno de la película'… Además, el nombre también tiene mucho que ver con la hoja de la Garnacha que cuando cae a la tierra y se dobla, se asemeja a la punta de una flecha." The arrowheads a boy hunted among the clay and silica clods, playing the hero — and the fallen Garnacha leaf, folded like a flint point. A bodega named after the games of a grandson in his grandmother's vineyard.
And the project did not stay with one vineyard. Over the years Alex found more plots in the same situation — abandoned, forgotten, threatened — in Batres, Cubas de la Sagra, Navalcarnero, El Álamo and across the provincial border in Carranque, Toledo. All of them are now part of what the family calls a project that "fights by the resistance of these last wonders that cannot disappear."
The Place — Five Towns, Two Provinces, Seven Hidden Jewels
The bodega works no more than seven hectares, in small parcels spread across Serranillos del Valle, Batres, Cubas de la Sagra, Navalcarnero and El Álamo in Madrid, and Carranque in Toledo — some owned, some subleased from local owners, nearly all of them recovered from abandonment by Alex and his family. Yields are kept miserly: 700 to 900 kilograms per hectare at most.
The Navalcarnero Vine: 1940, Ungrafted
On a solariega — a noble old hill — in Navalcarnero grows a vineyard planted in 1940 on its own roots, a Garnacha clone more than a century old. Alex calls it one of his most significant vineyards, and it gives his best wines. Ungrafted Garnacha of the pre-phylloxera type, dry-farmed on sand: a living fossil of Madrid viticulture, and the beating heart of the range.
Carranque: the Sandy Jewel by the Guadarrama
In Carranque, Toledo, near the Guadarrama river, a Garnacha vineyard planted in 1958 on deep, generous sandy soil gives grapes of real complexity. Alex calls it "another of our hidden jewels" — and from it come two of the range's stars: 13 Puntas, by carbonic maceration, and Lacarmela, aged twelve months in American oak.
Nettle, Horsetail, Calendula & Chamomile
The vineyard treatment is pre-chemical Spain: fermented plant decoctions gathered around the plots themselves — nettle, horsetail, calendula, chamomile — and almost no fertilising at all; when the vines need it, the same plants go into compost with small additions of horse, goat and sheep manure. The family is scrupulous about the vineyard's own rhythms, reading each plot through systematic observation. "La biodiversidad es algo muy importante que debemos proteger y conservar… tener los viñedos libres de tóxicos… eso es ¡Salud para todos!"
Serranillos & Batres: the Original Survivors
The founding vineyard — grandmother Mercedes' 1940 Garnacha — is the last of Serranillos del Valle, farmed in the traditional style with no agrochemicals of any kind. In Batres, Garnacha planted in dry farming over sixty years ago on sandy soil completes the Madrid arc. Together they are, in the family's words, vestiges of the great viticultural tradition of this comarca — kept alive vine by vine, row by row, in the shadow of the city that nearly erased them.
Winemaking — Each Vineyard Its Own Yeasts, Each Task Its Moon
The cellar discipline is one of site fidelity: each vineyard is vinified separately, with the indigenous yeasts of that exact place, so that every wine preserves the identity of its plot. The harvest — sometimes at night — is fully manual, with a first selection of bunches in the vine itself, and no oenological chemistry of any kind is used in the winery. The old ways do the rest.
And they are genuinely old: fermentations in small vessels — stainless steel and clay tinajas more than 200 years old; the Madrid-style sobremadre (fermenting and ageing on the mother of wine); spontaneous flor veils for the whites; carbonic maceration for 13 Puntas; American and French oak and tinajas for ageing. "Para las elaboraciones en bodega solo utilizamos levaduras de los propios viñedos y como hacían nuestros antepasados, seguimos los ritmos de la luna en los diferentes trabajos, aprovechando las bajas temperaturas de los fríos del invierno para clarificar de manera natural los vinos." Only the vineyard's own yeasts; the moon's rhythms as the ancestors followed them; winter's cold as the clarifier.
The credo fits on a label, and nearly does: "Nuestros vinos son ¡solo uva!, sin añadido alguno, siendo esta la identidad más pura de lo que hacemos. Tan solo hacemos vinos y cuanto más naturales, mejor." Our wines are just grapes — nothing added; that is the purest identity of what we do. We only make wine, and the more natural, the better. The reds run to a full 15%, but the concentration and balance of these old-vine, low-yield grapes carry it — wines built, in Alex's objective, to be enjoyed glass by glass, remembered, and bought again.
The Wines — Nine Wines, ~8,000 Bottles, One Identity
The range runs to nine references — four whites of Malvar and Moscatel, one rosé of old Garnacha, three reds of Garnacha — for a total of roughly 8,000 bottles a vintage. Several are numbered micro-productions of a few hundred bottles. The family's own words: "absolute purity and attachment to tradition."
Luba & Las Madres
Natural whites — Malvar & Airén, southwest MadridThe Malvar pair — Madrid's signature white grape, old vines, totally natural cultivation. Luba (Malvar and Airén, 12.5%): macerated and fermented 100% on skins in stainless steel, clarified by winter cold alone — apricot, green fig and herbs over vibrant acidity. Las Madres (100% Malvar, 12.5%): the old Madrid way of sobremadre, then 180 days of skin maceration, clarified by winter decantation — golden, unctuous, complex, pear and peach with a gently bitter, elegant finish. Proof that Madrid whites were making "orange wine" long before the term existed.
Velo de Luba & Atel
Flor-aged whites — Malvar & Moscatel in 200-year tinajasThe tinaja treasures — fermented on skins, then aged under a spontaneous veil of flor in clay tinajas more than 200 years old. Velo de Luba (Malvar with a little Airén; the 1958 sandy, granite-derived plot by the Guadarrama Regional Park; nine months under flor): dry, elegant, mineral and long. Atel (100% Moscatel de Grano Menudo, 1970 Navalcarnero vineyard; a year under flor in tinajas, a year in steel, a year in bottle; 14%; only 600–700 numbered bottles): sweet but dry, hazelnut and flowers, powerful and persistent with a peppery close. Ancestral vessels, ancestral method.
Violeta
Rosé — old-vine Garnacha, Batres & Serranillos del ValleThe pale jewel — Garnacha from recovered vines of 1940 or older in Batres and Serranillos, direct-pressed and fermented thirty days in stainless steel. A shifting pink-yellow that defies definition in the glass; currant, strawberry and pomegranate on the nose; soft, refreshing, enveloping, with the acidity to balance its 15% and a long, mineral finish. Production never exceeds 500 numbered bottles a vintage. An aperitivo, a meal, a whole summer.
13 Puntas
Young red — Garnacha, Carranque (Toledo), 670mThe masterpiece of carbonic maceration — Garnacha from ~50-year-old vines at 670 metres on Carranque's deep sand, harvested by hand at full ripeness and carbonically macerated, then rested six months in stainless steel after malolactic, with no barrel at all. Raspberry and cherry with fennel and bay; soft, fresh, voluminous, the tannins melting, a long finish with a whisper of liquorice. The joyful young red of the range — tapas to barbecue to blue fish. 15%, zero additions.
Lacarmela & Punta de Flecha
Aged reds — Garnacha, Serranillos & recovered old vinesThe cellar wines. Lacarmela (recovered old-vine Garnacha of Serranillos; thirty days in small steel tanks, then a minimum of twelve months in American and French oak and ten to twelve more in bottle; 14.5%): ripe fruit, toast, sweet spice and balsam over refreshing old-vine acidity — "the richness of the past and the promise of the future," in the bodega's words. Punta de Flecha (the flagship and namesake: Garnacha fermented thirty days in clay tinaja with the vineyard's own yeasts, then 11–12 months in American oak and 8–10 in bottle; 15%): fresh and unctuous, abundant red fruit and plum, toasted notes, integrated tannins, a long persistence. The top of the ladder.
Experiments: Espumoso & Dulce de Garnacha
Cellar experiments — El ÁlamoThe restless edge — Alex is "in continuous evolution, trying new things": an experimental sparkling in development, and a sweet Garnacha wine that one visiting critic describes simply as delicious. Small lots, occasional releases, gone when gone — the same curiosity that built the bodega, still pointing forward like an arrowhead.
Legacy — Resistance by Recovery
Bodega Punta de Flecha matters because it is a frontline account of what Madrid's wine country lost — and what one stubborn family can still save. The comarca southwest of the capital once teemed with vines and cooperatives; the construction boom erased Serranillos del Valle's heritage entirely, and the rest survived only in fragments. Alex's project is explicitly a resistance: the family's own words describe "these last wonders that cannot disappear." Seven rescued hectares, an ungrafted 1940 clone in Navalcarnero, a 1958 sandy jewel in Carranque, the last vineyard of a paved-over town — a small ark of Madrid viticulture, built one abandoned plot at a time.
The legacy is agricultural and pre-chemical: vineyards farmed with nettle, horsetail, calendula and chamomile decoctions gathered at the plots' edges; manure from horse, goat and sheep; yields held to 700–900 kg/ha; biodiversity defended as a matter of principle — tener los viñedos libres de tóxicos… eso es ¡Salud para todos! In a comarca under the shadow of the capital's sprawl, these practices are not nostalgia; they are land management as preservation.
The legacy is technical and archival. Each vineyard vinified separately with its own indigenous yeasts; the moon marking the work; winter cold replacing chemistry; sobremadre, flor veils, carbonic maceration, 200-year-old tinajas — the bodega keeps alive a whole grammar of Spanish winemaking that most modern cellars have forgotten how to read. And the wines prove the grammar still speaks: Madrid Malvar fermented on skins for 180 days, Moscatel aged a year under flor in ancestral clay, Garnacha at 15% carried with balance.
And the legacy is familial — grandmother Mercedes' vineyard of 1940 still growing, her house still storing the best jewels, her temperament legible in her grandson's refusal to quit. When the council's old regulation barred him from Serranillos, he did not sell or surrender; he moved eight kilometres and kept the vines. "Esto tiene que perdurar" — this must endure — wrote the critic who visited. On the evidence of nine honest wines from seven rescued hectares, it will.