The Wizard & the Pre-Phylloxera Sand
Microbio Wines is the intensely personal and experimental natural wine project of Ismael Gozalo Palomo — fifth-generation winegrower, co-founder of Ossian, and the man known across Spain as El Mago de las Verdejos (The Wizard of Verdejo). Established in 1998 in the village of Nieva, Segovia, though it did not receive his full attention until he departed Ossian in the early 2010s, Microbio is a declaration of independence from the DO Rueda system and a testament to the extraordinary viticultural heritage of his family's vineyards. Of the 27 hectares owned by his family, Ismael works approximately five, selling the remainder — some 75 to 80 percent of his production — to Ossian, and devoting his heart to the remaining grapes. The vines are pre-phylloxera, ungrafted, head-trained Verdejo planted between 1748 and 1872 on pure siliceous sand, gravel, and pebble soils at 800 to 900 metres altitude — a terroir so sandy that phylloxera never arrived, and so ancient that the vines have never seen a chemical treatment across five generations. In a converted medieval monastery cellar dating from the 11th to 14th centuries, Ismael ferments spontaneously with indigenous yeasts across an arsenal of vessels — 250-year-old tinajas, Mosel foudres, old barrels, stainless steel, and glass demijohns buried underground — producing around 10,000 bottles per year of wine that is never fined, never filtered, and bottled with zero added sulfur. The portfolio is divided into two lines: Microbio Wines, the experimental range of skin-contact, oxidative, reductive, and ancestral-method cuvées; and Ismael Gozalo Wines, a slightly more classical trilogy that nevertheless remains radically natural. All are labelled simply as Vinos de España — a deliberate rejection of appellation rules that would constrain his ancient vines and his modern imagination.
Ismael Gozalo & the Two Lines
The story of Microbio Wines is inseparable from the story of Ismael Gozalo Palomo — a man who carries five generations of viticultural memory in his hands, who co-founded one of Spain's most respected white-wine estates (Ossian, in 2004), and who then walked away from it to devote himself to something smaller, stranger, and more true. The family vineyards in Nieva, a village in the province of Segovia on the southern edge of what is geographically DO Rueda, have been cultivated without chemicals since before the concept of organic certification existed. The vines are pre-phylloxera — ungrafted, head-trained, planted on soils so sandy that the louse could not survive — and they represent a living archive of Verdejo genetics that predates every modern clone, every university selection, every commercial nursery. Ismael is their custodian, and Microbio is their voice.
The name Microbio — which can be read as Micro-Bio or simply Microbe — reflects Ismael's core belief: that the microbial life of the vineyard and the cellar is the true author of wine, and that the vigneron's role is not to command these microbes but to accompany them. This philosophy, which he calls Biosinergias or bio-synergy, predates Steiner's biodynamics by two millennia — Ismael is fond of pointing out that Pliny the Elder wrote of biosynergy, not biodynamics — and it governs every decision in the vineyard and the cellar. The soil, the plant, the fruit, and the wine exist in a destiny of balance; nothing happens at random; and the vigneron's task is to observe, to be quiet, to relax, and to intervene only when the vines themselves indicate the necessity. "Each vine has his own work," Ismael says, summarising a philosophy that rejects standardised vineyard protocols in favour of individual vine attention. Of the seven-person team, only four are permitted to prune — the others have not yet learned which wood to cut and which to leave, and on vines this ancient, a wrong cut is not a mistake but a wound that can fester across decades.
The division of the portfolio into two lines — Microbio Wines and Ismael Gozalo Wines — is not a commercial segmentation but an artistic and philosophical one. The Microbio line is where Ismael experiments: skin-contact orange wines in 250-year-old tinajas, reductive cloudy musts in stainless steel, oxidative pressings that flirt with volatile acidity, ancestral-method pét-nats, and glass-demijohn whites buried underground so that nothing stands between the terroir and the bottle. The Ismael Gozalo line — comprising La Banda del Argílico, Sin Nombre, and ResPublica Verdejo — is slightly more classical in conception, though no less natural in execution; it represents Ismael's desire to keep alive a certain period of his life, to monitor the development of wines that filter themselves without losing their grandeur, and to demonstrate that Verdejo from pre-phylloxera vines can achieve a mineral complexity and bottle-ageing potential that no conventionally farmed, technologically manipulated Rueda can approach. Both lines share the same grapes, the same cellar, and the same zero-sulfur protocol; they differ only in intention and in the degree of experimentation that Ismael permits himself.
The harvest at Microbio is never less than six or seven weeks long, beginning with unripe grapes for the pét-nats and ending with the last, most concentrated parcels for the extended-skin-contact cuvées. Ismael harvests by hand into small boxes when the grapes are cold — often at dawn or night — and presses them in a small vertical press that he has used for years, seeking oxidation in some cuvées and avoiding it in others, always guided by the condition of the fruit and the temperature of the cellar. The medieval monastery cellar of El Parral, dating from the 11th to 14th centuries, maintains a constant temperature of 10 to 14 degrees Celsius, and Ismael is fanatical about keeping the must below 12 degrees during pressing, knowing that warm grapes release their most delicate aromas into the air rather than into the wine. "When you press warm grapes in the cellar you have that really nice aroma," he explains, "but it disappears from the grapes — it means the wine will never have that kind of aroma again." This is the precision of the magician: not the precision of the laboratory but the precision of the senses, of timing, of temperature, of touch.
"Lose all panic and be free. If you want to be happy always have your feet in the earth and your head in the clouds."
— Ismael Gozalo
Nieva & the Sea of Tethys
Nieva sits in the province of Segovia, in the autonomous community of Castilla y León, roughly two hours north of Madrid and just south of the Duero river valley. It is a high-altitude village — 800 to 900 metres above sea level — surrounded by a landscape of dry, breezy plateaus, small family farms, and the kind of intense continental climate that produces huge diurnal temperature shifts during the growing season: 40 degrees Celsius in summer, minus 17 in winter, and daily swings of more than 20 degrees when the grapes are ripening. This is not the gentle Atlantic influence of Galicia nor the Mediterranean softness of Levante; it is the raw, exposed interior of the Iberian plateau, where the air is thin, the sun is merciless, and the vines must struggle for every drop of water and every hour of warmth. The altitude preserves acidity; the continentality concentrates sugar; and the balance between the two is what allows Ismael to harvest Verdejo at extraordinary ripeness while maintaining the freshness that makes his wines age-worthy.
The soils are the defining feature — and the miracle — of the Microbio terroir. Pure siliceous sand, gravel, and pebbles, with occasional clay layers (the bandas de argílico that give one cuvée its name) and calcareous deposits that recall the ancient seabed beneath. The ground where the vines are planted was, 180 million years ago, the Tethys Sea, and Ismael is fond of reminding visitors that his most saline wine — the flagship Microbio Verdejo aged in Mosel foudres — tastes of that prehistoric ocean. The sand is so deep and so pure that phylloxera never arrived in Nieva; the louse cannot survive in sandy soils, and the vines have remained ungrafted since their planting in the 18th and 19th centuries. This is not merely a viticultural curiosity; it is a genetic and sensory singularity. Ungrafted vines develop root systems that plunge directly into the subsoil without the intervening barrier of American rootstock, extracting not only water and minerals but a depth of flavour and a structural complexity that grafted vines cannot replicate. The yields are tiny — around 35 hectolitres per hectare — and the grapes are small, thick-skinned, and intensely flavoured.
The vineyards have never seen chemicals — not because Ismael converted to organic farming in his generation, but because his great-great-grandfather, his great-grandfather, his grandfather, and his father never used them either. The vines were always farmed as his grandparents farmed them: by hand, with the soul, observing the passage of time through the vines and their cycles. This is not nostalgia but necessity; on soils this poor and this sandy, chemical fertilisers would destroy the microbial life that is the vineyard's immune system, and herbicides would erode the fragile topsoil into the wind. The farming is certified organic, but Ismael prefers to speak of viticultura pura — pure viticulture — a practice that requires no labels because it requires no exceptions. The bandas de argílico — clay bands that run through the sandy subsoil at 40 to 50 centimetres depth — maintain freshness and microbial diversity, acting as underground reservoirs of moisture and biological activity. Ismael's favourite grape is Verdejo, and his favourite vines are the oldest: the 273-year-old mother vines that produce the estate's most concentrated, most mineral, most age-worthy wines.
The vineyard is not a monoculture but a polycultural inheritance. Beyond the Verdejo that dominates the estate's production, Ismael works with Tempranillo, Syrah, and Merlot from his Nieva vineyards; Mencía from slate soils in Corullón, Bierzo; Garnacha from granite soils in El Barraco, Gredos; and Rufete from the Sierra de Salamanca. Each variety is matched to its terroir, each wine is a collaboration between grape and place, and the portfolio — though tiny in volume — is vast in geographic and geological range. This is the work of a man who believes that the best wine is made in the vineyard, who sells 75 to 80 percent of his grapes to finance the perfection of the remaining 20 to 25 percent, and who treats every hectare, every vine, every cluster as an individual conversation. The sand, the altitude, the cold, the sun, and the ancient seabed beneath: all united in one slope, one argument, one unanswerable proof that the past is not dead but fermenting.
Microbio Wines is located in the village of Nieva, province of Segovia, Castilla y León, approximately two hours north of Madrid at 800–900 metres altitude. Founded in 1998 by Ismael Gozalo Palomo, fifth-generation winegrower. The family owns 27 hectares; Ismael works approximately five for Microbio, selling the remainder to Ossian. The estate produces roughly 10,000 bottles per year of zero-sulfur, unfiltered, unfined natural wine from pre-phylloxera, ungrafted vines. All wines are labelled Vinos de España, outside the DO Rueda appellation.
The vineyards are planted on pure siliceous sand, gravel, and pebbles over calcareous deposits from the ancient Tethys Sea — 180 million years old. The sand is so deep that phylloxera never arrived; all vines are ungrafted and head-trained, some dating to 1748, 1847, 1868, and 1872. Clay bands (bandas de argílico) at 40–50cm depth maintain freshness and microbial diversity. Yields ~35 hl/ha. The soils have never seen chemical treatment across five generations.
Certified organic viticulture practiced as viticultura pura — pure viticulture requiring no exceptions. Ismael follows Biosinergias, a philosophy predating Steiner's biodynamics by 2,000 years (referenced by Pliny the Elder), emphasising destiny and balance between soil, plant, and fruit. No herbicides, no systemic fungicides, no synthetic fertilisers. The vineyard is worked by hand, with individual vine attention; only four of seven team members are permitted to prune the ancient vines. Living soil and biodiversity are the basis of quality.
The winery occupies a converted medieval monastery cellar (El Parral) dating from the 11th to 14th centuries, located opposite the Nieva church. The cellar maintains a constant 10–14°C temperature. Vessels include 250-year-old tinajas (1,800L), large Mosel foudres (1,015–1,050L), old oak barrels, stainless steel tanks, and 16-litre glass demijohns buried underground. Two separate underground cellars — one from his father's family (five generations), one from his mother's (three generations) — provide natural, stable ageing conditions without temperature control.
Tinajas, Foudres & the Glass Demijohn
The cellar philosophy at Microbio Wines is governed by a single, non-negotiable principle: the wine makes itself, and the vigneron's role is to protect the conditions under which this self-making can occur. Ismael is not an absenteeist — he is present, tasting, racking, deciding — but he does not impose. There is no chaptalisation, no acidification, no selected yeast, no enzymatic correction, no fining, no filtration, and no added sulfur dioxide in any cuvée. The wines are 100% fermented grape juice, the product of indigenous yeasts, ancient vessels, and the constant cool of a medieval cellar. When Ismael says that he has lost all sense of panic and stress, he means that he has surrendered the illusion of control that conventional oenology sells to the anxious. The wine will ferment when it is ready; it will clarify when it is ready; it will be bottled when it is ready. The vigneron waits, observes, and trusts.
The vessel diversity at Microbio is unmatched in Spain and rare anywhere in the world. Ismael employs 250-year-old tinajas — tall, narrow clay amphorae of 1,800 litres, distinct from Georgian qvevri in shape and volume — for his most radical cuvées, where whole-cluster Verdejo ferments on its skins for six to nine months, producing orange wines of extraordinary tannic structure and longevity. He uses large Mosel foudres of 1,015 and 1,050 litres, imported from the German river valley, for his flagship Microbio Verdejo, where whole-cluster pressing and partial destemming are followed by spontaneous fermentation and five months of lees ageing in stainless steel. He uses old oak barrels of various sizes for cuvées such as Sin Rumbo, where oxidative pressing and slow fermentation in 600-litre barrels produce a wine with a slight, intentional volatile lift. He uses stainless steel tanks for the reductive, cloudy musts of Rack, where high turbidity and the absence of batonnage create a wine of extreme, almost challenging personality. And he uses 16-litre glass demijohns, buried underground in the cool earth, for Frágil — a wine so delicate, so sharp, so varietally pure that any contact with wood or clay would obscure its crystalline Verdejo character. The demijohns provide natural protection without SO₂; the wine rests on its lees in glass, developing texture and depth while remaining as transparent as a photograph.
For the orange wines, Ismael's method is specific and ancestral. Kilómetro 0 "El Origen" and Brutal are Verdejo from pre-phylloxera vines, fermented as whole clusters in tinajas for two to seven months, then pressed and transferred to old barrels for further ageing. The colour is deep amber; the tannin is high; the acidity is vibrant; and the wines are, as Ismael notes, very long-lived and grateful for extended bottle ageing. These are not fashionable skin-contact wines made for immediate consumption; they are archaeological wines, connecting the drinker to the 9,000-year-old origins of vinification in Georgia, Armenia, and Anatolia. Ismael calls them kilómetro cero — zero kilometre — because they represent the starting point of all wine, before oak, before steel, before technology, before intervention. The tinajas are covered after fermentation to trap CO₂; the gap between the grape cap and the vessel neck is carefully managed; and the wines are racked only when Ismael judges that they have extracted everything the skins and stems have to give.
For the pét-nats — Nieva York, the white and rosé ancestral-method sparkling wines — Ismael harvests the first, slightly unripe grapes of the vintage, presses them at low turbidity and low temperature, and bottles them during the final stages of alcoholic fermentation so that the remaining sugar produces natural CO₂ in the bottle. After months of ageing on fine lees, the bottles are disgorged à la volée — by hand, without freezing — and topped up with dry wine from the same lot. The result is a pet-nat of extraordinary freshness, low alcohol (around 11.5 to 12.5%), and a saline, mineral clarity that speaks of the Tethys seabed beneath the sand. The rosé version blends Tempranillo with a small percentage of Verdejo, creating a wine of pale salmon colour and wild strawberry aromatics that is as joyful as the white is serious. These are the bubbles of the house — buenas burbujas, buenos momentos — and they embody the playful, unpanicked side of Ismael's personality.
We Don't Speak About 'Natural' Wines
Ismael Gozalo refuses the label "natural wine" with the same intensity that he refuses the DO Rueda appellation. "We don't want to speak about 'natural' wines," he insists. "It is much better when we talk about 'wines' or 'chemical wines' — you choose what you want to drink." For Ismael, the distinction is not between natural and conventional but between wine and chemical product. He does not put "bio," "biodynamic," or "eco" on his labels because pure viticulture should require no advertisement; the absence of chemicals should be the default, not the exception. "When you don't do this kind of viticulture you are a liar," he says bluntly. "You need to put cross and bones. This wine is a f***ing chemical wine." This is not marketing rhetoric; it is ethical clarity. The wines of Microbio are not defined by what they lack (sulfur, selected yeasts, filtration) but by what they are: fermented grape juice from ungrafted vines on ancient seabed sand, made in a monastery cellar by a fifth-generation magician who has lost his panic and found his freedom.
The Microbio Line & the Ismael Gozalo Line
Microbio Wines produces approximately 10,000 bottles annually across two distinct lines: the Microbio range — experimental, boundary-pushing cuvées that explore skin contact, oxidation, reduction, and ancestral-method sparkling — and the Ismael Gozalo range, a slightly more classical trilogy that nevertheless remains unfined, unfiltered, and zero-sulfur. All wines are made from pre-phylloxera, ungrafted Verdejo vines (and, for certain cuvées, Tempranillo, Syrah, Merlot, Mencía, Garnacha, or Rufete) grown on siliceous sand and gravel at 800–900 metres altitude, harvested by hand into small boxes, and vinified with indigenous yeasts in the 11th-century cellar of El Parral. The portfolio spans white, orange, red, and sparkling — all labelled Vinos de España, without appellation, and united by a common character: intense varietal expression, profound mineral depth, and the unmistakable signature of ancient vines on prehistoric seabed. The following represents the core cuvées as they have emerged from Ismael's decades of biosynergistic, zero-intervention winemaking in the highlands of Segovia.
"We don't want to speak about 'natural' wines. It is much better when we talk about 'wines' or 'chemical wines' — you choose what you want to drink."
— Ismael Gozalo
The Magician & the Man Without Panic
To understand Microbio Wines, one must understand the man who has lost all panic — who makes wine completely free, who has surrendered the anxiety of control, and who trusts the ancient vines, the sandy soils, and the cool monastery cellar to produce what no laboratory could invent. Ismael Gozalo is not a romantic who ignores the difficulties of viticulture; he is a pragmatist who has learned that panic is the enemy of quality, that stress transmits itself into the wine, and that the best decisions are made with feet in the earth and head in the clouds. His desert-island wine is a double magnum of Ganevat's La Vigne De Mon Père — a choice that reveals both his taste for the Jura's oxidative, living whites and his belief that wine should be shared in large format, over time, without hurry. His favourite wine region outside his own is the Jura — not coincidentally, another frontier of natural winemaking where ancient methods and modern courage converge.
The identity is also defined by refusal — refusal of the DO Rueda appellation, refusal of the "natural wine" label, refusal of chemical viticulture, refusal of selected yeasts, refusal of sulfur, refusal of filtration, refusal of fining, refusal of the industrial wine industry that he admires nothing about except the people in the natural wine world who share his values. Ismael is a vigneron of negation and affirmation: he negates everything that stands between the grape and the glass, and he affirms everything that connects the drinker to the vineyard, the seabed, the sand, and the centuries. The wines are not easy; they are not made for mass appeal; they are made for those who want new experiences, who are not starting to drink wine but who have already travelled far enough to appreciate the radical. Rack is not for beginners; Kilómetro 0 is not for the faint; Sin Rumbo is not for those who seek predictability. But for those who have lost their own panic, who are free, who have their feet in the earth and their heads in the clouds, these wines offer something that no commercial product can: the taste of time, sand, and the absence of fear.
The future of Microbio Wines is tied to the continued health of the pre-phylloxera vines — some now approaching 275 years of age — and to the gradual refinement of a portfolio that already spans two lines, multiple regions, and a dozen distinct cuvées. Ismael will continue to sell the majority of his grapes to Ossian, financing his Microbio project with the conventional while pursuing the extraordinary with the remainder. He will continue to experiment with Mencía from Bierzo, Garnacha from Gredos, and Rufete from Salamanca, expanding the geographic footprint of his natural wine philosophy while keeping his heart in Nieva. The pét-nats will continue to fizz with zero-sulfur joy; the orange wines will continue to macerate in 250-year-old tinajas; the glass demijohns will continue to rest underground; and the medieval cellar will continue to breathe its cool, constant air through wines that make themselves. The Jura will remain his spiritual home; the natural wine community will remain his tribe; and the ancient Verdejo vines will remain his voice, his inheritance, and his argument for a viticulture that needs no adjectives because it has never known chemicals.
In an age of increasing homogenisation in wine — of global varieties, engineered yeasts, and technological fixes — Microbio Wines stands as a compelling alternative, not because it rejects modernity but because it has embraced a deeper modernity: one that values 273-year-old vines over new plantings, sand over irrigation, altitude over warmth, ungrafted rootstocks over American resistance, medieval cellars over temperature control, tinajas over stainless steel, glass demijohns over oak prestige, zero sulfur over preservative crutches, Vinos de España over appellation conformity, biosynergias over biodynamic certification, the absence of panic over the anxiety of control, and the specific voice of Nieva's pre-phylloxera Verdejo over the standardised replication of a global luxury style. Ismael Gozalo is not merely making wine; he is proving that a fifth-generation winegrower can become a magician without losing his humility, that the Jura and Segovia can speak the same language, that chemical wines should carry a warning label, that the Tethys Sea still flows in every glass, and that the best winemaking is the winemaking that requires no panic, no stress, and no intervention beyond the courage to wait. From the 11th-century cellar to the buried demijohn, from the 250-year-old tinaja to the Mosel foudre, from the sand of Nieva to the seabed of 180 million years ago, from Ossian to Microbio, from panic to freedom: all united in one bottle, one slope, one unanswerable argument for the possibility of authentic, place-specific, ancestrally rooted, naturally honest wine from the highlands of Castilla y León.
Ismael Gozalo — El Mago de las Verdejos — is a fifth-generation winegrower who has lost all sense of panic and stress in the cellar. His philosophy is not absence but presence: the presence of the vigneron in the vineyard, the presence of the microbial life in the must, the presence of the ancient vines in every glass. The wizard does not impose; he accompanies. The result is wine that makes itself, fermented by indigenous yeasts in vessels that range from 250-year-old tinajas to buried glass demijohns, all in the cool darkness of an 11th-century monastery cellar.
Ismael refuses the DO Rueda, refuses the "natural wine" label, refuses sulfur, selected yeasts, filtration, and fining with equal intensity. His ethical clarity is uncompromising: there is wine, and there is chemical product; there is pure viticulture, and there is lies. The wines are labelled Vinos de España not as a downgrade but as a liberation from bureaucratic rules that would constrain his ancient vines and his experimental imagination. This is not marketing; it is moral philosophy in liquid form.