Viña Mambrilla

About Winery and Wines

The village of Mambrilla de Castrejón, in the province of Burgos, Spain, has its origins in the Middle Ages, having been founded during the peace of the second half of the 11th Century. Its historical name, Mambrilla, comes from one of the nearby hills to the north, La Mambla. The second part of its name, Castrejon, comes from another nearby hill, the Santa María, which is crowned by a castle, or “castro.” The agrarian repopulation taking place at the time, although weakened by the Catholic Reconquest of the Iberian Peninsula, ran parallel to an increase in the number of inhabitants. People move out of the castle, where ceramics of that period can still be found, and settle on the fertile banks of the neighbouring springs. Here, Romanesque is to leave its mark in the local church and hermitages known as the “Humilladero” and the “Castrejona.” Columns in the classic style still help support the portico of the latter. They are witnesses who did not give in to the strength of the Late Gothic, nor the Salomonic appearance of altarpieces adorned with green tendrils and golden clusters of grapes. Wine, hunting, and wild bulls were their main sources of wealth. Grapevines covered most of the cultivated land until the Philoxera plague at the end of the 19th Century savagely did away with a large part of the vineyards. Parroquial documents dating back to the 16th Century mention tithes consisting of the fine wine made in the wineries surrounding the town. The surname “ARRANZ” appears as early as that century. And it continues to figure among the 113 inhabitants of Mambrilla documented in 1788, and among the 170 that live in the village in 1900. At the end of the 20th Century, “Viña Mambrilla” still reflects the tradition of its ancestors. “Primitivo” is the father of the new generation of the ARRANZ BROTHERS, who have always made their wines with utmost care and attention.