11 Pinos: Eleven Pine Trees, 1940s Bobal and the Best Corner of Spain You've Never Heard Of

Ask most people to name a Spanish red grape and you'll get Tempranillo, then Garnacha, then a long pause. Almost nobody says Bobal, which is odd, because it's the third most planted red variety in the country. For most of the last century it went into anonymous bulk wine and cheap rosé, tankered off and forgotten about. It's only in the last twenty years or so that a handful of growers have started treating it properly, and the results are frankly ridiculous value.

11 Pinos is one of those growers, and we've got four of their bottles on the shelf at the moment.

Right, so is it 11 Pinos or Vega Tolosa?

Fair question, and it trips up a lot of people (Vivino files the whole thing under "Vega Tolosa", which doesn't help).

Vega Tolosa is the bodega. It's a family winery in Casas-Ibáñez, out in Albacete, growing wine since 1905 and now run by the fourth generation of the Tolosa family. At home in Spain they bottle under five names: Vega Tolosa itself, plus Finca Los Halcones, Bobal Icon, Capricho DiVino and 4 Gatos.

11 Pinos is their export label. Same family, same farm, same cellar, different name on the bottle. It's the range that gets sent abroad, which is why you'll see it written as "Vega Tolosa 11 Pinos" on merchant lists (and why Vivino files it under the winery name), and why it barely shows up on the Spanish side of their website. It's certified organic, certified vegan, and made from fruit off the family's own land rather than bought in.

So: one producer, two names. If you like these, "Vega Tolosa" is the name to look out for. And vice versa.

And the eleven pines?

They're real, and you can go and count them.

The family's land sits out in the Cabriel valley, and in among it is a very old pine wood made up of exactly eleven centuries-old trees. That's it. That's the name. The rest of the estate is ringed with holm oaks, junipers and wild aromatic scrub, which tells you a lot about the sort of place this is: not a monoculture with a vineyard bolted on, but a working farm with woodland in it.

We love a wine named after something you could actually walk up to and touch.

Where it's from, and why that matters

D.O.P. Manchuela sits in the south-eastern corner of Castilla-La Mancha, wedged between the river valleys of the Júcar and the Cabriel. On paper it's baking central Spain. In practice, it's a lot cleverer than that.

The vineyards are up at 750 metres, and they're only about 120km from the Mediterranean, so warm dry winds blow in from the west during the day and cool damp ones come back off the sea at night. Grapes ripen slowly and hang on to their acidity, which is exactly what you want and exactly what most of central Spain can't manage. The soils are chalky limestone, full of organic matter, and they hold water well enough that the vines don't need coddling.

The farm also sits in the transition zone of the UNESCO Cabriel Biosphere Reserve, which is not a phrase you often get to type about a £12 bottle of red.

Farming, properly

The whole 400-hectare estate (150 of it vines) is certified organic, and they're pretty unromantic about how they do it: compost made on site, prunings returned to the soil, legumes rotated through to fix nitrogen, and manure from their own organically fed animals. No synthetic fertiliser. All the wines are certified vegan too.

The bit we enjoyed most from their own write-up is that they measure success partly by what's living out there, and cheerfully list the partridges and lizards that have moved back in. Biodiversity as a KPI. More of this, please.

They grow other things as well, by the way: olive oil and lentils come off the same farm.

The four we've got in

11 Pinos Bobal, £12

The flagship, and the reason we brought the rest in. 100% Bobal off head-trained old vines planted in 1941, so they're heading for their 85th birthday. Deep cherry red with violet edges, black fruit, cherry and redcurrant, a proper mineral streak, and a fleshy palate with polished tannins and good bright acidity underneath. It gets three months in French oak, just enough to round the edges without turning it into a woodpile. 14.5%, so it means business.

The 2022 vintage picked up 94 points at the Decanter World Wine Awards 2024. Ninety-four points. For twelve quid. We've checked the invoice twice.

11 Pinos Bobal Rosé, £13

Same old Bobal vines, made pale and pink. Strawberry and red fruit on the nose, then fresh and surprisingly intense on the palate, with enough acidity to keep it dry and moreish rather than sweet and sticky. 12.5%. This is the one for a warm afternoon outside the Market Hall, or with anything off a barbecue, or a plate of ham and olives and not much of a plan.

11 Pinos Chardonnay, £12

Chardonnay from high-altitude chalky clay, and it shows: pale lemon, white peach, pear and citrus blossom, rounded and full in the mouth but with the acidity holding it all upright. 13%. If you've written off Chardonnay because of something that happened to you in 2004, this is a very cheap way to change your mind.

11 Pinos Orange Macabeo, £15

The interesting one. Macabeo left on its skins for a full two months, which is a long time by anyone's standards. Stone fruit and white blossom, then a soft, textured, properly grippy palate with a mineral finish. 13%, and only around 6,500 bottles made.

If you've never tried an orange wine, this is a genuinely friendly place to start: it's got the texture and the savoury edge without going full farmyard. Drink it a touch warmer than you'd think, around 10-12°C, and put it next to something with a bit of spice or a hard cheese.

Why we stock them

Because they tick every box we care about: a family who've been there since 1905, farming organically on their own land, working with a native grape almost nobody outside Spain has heard of, and selling it at a price that makes no sense in the best possible way. The Bobal in particular is one of the most absurd value bottles we've had through the door this year.

You'll find all four on the shelf at the stall in Stockport Indoor Market. Come and have a look, and ask us about the Bobal.

And if you'd rather it came to you

If the sound of bottles like this turning up at your door appeals, that's exactly what the Wine Boy Club is for: a box of hand-picked wines delivered across Stockport and South Manchester, as often (or not) as you like. No algorithms, no bulk buying, just Mark picking bottles he's excited about. Something from the 11 Pinos range is very likely to end up in there.