DO PENEDES
BODEGA JEAN LEON

Pago Jean León. 08775 Torrelavit, (Barcelona). SPAIN. Tel: +34 93 899 5512 Fax: +34 93 899 5517
www.jeanleon.com - E-mail: visitas@jeanleon.com

The visit to Jean Leon gives you the chance to learn and discover its story, enjoying an excellent landscape and tasting prestigious wines. Today as always, the Jean Leon winery continues faithful to the dictates of its founder and bases its work on quality, tradition, and continual experimentation with the aim of producing superior wines, year after year.

The Jean Leon winery was designed and built in 1964, in the Bordeaux Chateau style. It stands at the centre of the estate, at one of its highest points, and is surrounded by the company’s own vineyards. It was founded by Jean Leon, born Ceferino Carrión in the city of Santander (Spain). At the age of 19, with just a small suitcase for luggage, he embarked on a long and arduous journey that would take him to Paris, New York and finally to Hollywood. Years later, fortune would lead him to set up in partnership with James Dean to create a world-unique restaurant: ”La Scala” in Beverly Hills. Known and respected in gastronomic and oenological circles, in 1963 he decided to embark on the adventure of creating the wine that would carry his name, Jean León. He was the first to cultivate Chardonnay and produce Cabernet Sauvignon in Spain.

However, from the time it was built, the inside of the Jean Leon winery has always been home to the latest technological advances for the production of wines of the highest expression. The winery’s philosophy has always been oriented towards quality, elegance and limited production so that individualized control of all wines throughout the process can be ensured. This is why, despite the technical advances incorporated by the winery, many tasks are still performed in a manual and traditional way, thus guaranteeing the perfect monitoring of all processes. Oenologist Jaume Rovira continues to oversee all wine production, contributing the knowledge accumulated over many years working on the estate and in the winery.

Its underground cellars have a capacity of up to 3,000 casks. These cellars maintain a natural, stable temperature (between 13ºC and 15ºC) all year round, as well as a suitable degree of humidity for ageing in 225-litre casks and posterior bottle ageing.

THE VINEYARDS
The Jean Leon pago lies right at the heart of the Penedés region and was purchased in 1963 by grouping together several carefully selected pieces of land. The property consists in total of 150 hectares, of which only 100 are arable and of these just 67 are currently under cultivation. The estate is divided into several sections of land, and only one wine is produced in each. These sections are known as the “Pagos”. Pago wines are produced from the grapes of a particular single vineyard. No grapes are sourced from outside the vineyard for these wines. They are “own production” only. The pago concept is equivalent to the “Cru” in Bordeaux, to the “clos” or “climat” in Burgundy, to the “Vignetti in Italy, to the “Single vineyard” in California, and to the “Quinta” in Portugal.

WINES FROM THIS WINERY

Pictures and text courtesy of Jean Leon.