Since 1959 and located in the bountiful region of La Mancha, Santa Catalina Agricultural Cooperative stands as a reference for gastronomy and agriculture in the area.
Santa Catalina farmers continuously strive for endless perfection with only one aim in mind: to nurture and reap outstanding grapes and olives, which later become delightful wines and superb olive oil.
Santa Catalina aim to obtain exquisite fruit and minimise environmental impact while integrating eco-friendly projects. Their approach offers farmers the utmost freedom to maintain their hand-picking tradition while steadily innovate to improve quality.
Currently, Santa Catalina employs cutting edge processing systems, both in its winery and its oil mill.
In the interview shared below, we gain insights into the winery products with a fresh perspective on the values and qualities producer is looking for in the production journey.
Q. What is the core product of Your brand?
A. Campechano Organic wine and Los Molinos de Santa Catalina Extra Virgin Olive Oil are the products that we produce. Even when our wine production is larger that the olive oil, we put the same effort and technology to achieve maximum quality in both products.
Q. Tell us about the process Your product goes through, from sourcing to the packaging phase?
A. “Since we work directly with the farmers, we can control every single step of the production process. Both grape for organic wine and olive for organic olive oil have separate production line avoiding getting in contact with our conventional wines and olive oils.
Besides that, deposit tanks are regularly analysed to make sure no contamination has entered.
The elaboration process of “Los Molinos de Santa Catalina” our conventional and organic extra virgin olive oil are both pretty similar because both are made only by mechanical procedures. The difference is in the pesticide and chemical control of the crops.
However, our “Campechano” organic wine elaboration process is quite different to the conventional one, we use the static debourbage technique that allow us cleaning the must without using any kind of chemical product. Also, a much lower quantity of sulphites is use in our organic wines.”
Q. What are the qualities You are looking for when creating Your product?
A. For us, wines and olive oil must preserve the essence, aromas, and taste of the fruits they come from. With “Campechano” in wines and “Los Molinos” in Extra Virgin Olive oil the goal is to deliver excellent quality products that maintain the original taste of the varieties of grapes and olives we work with, thus delivering intense flavours and fruitiness that make our oils and wines a unique expression of the land they come from, La Mancha. All this being respectful with the environment.
Q. What makes Your product better than the one of Your competitor?
A. “We have around 6000 hectares of crops, which give us annually approximately 40 million kilos of product. This massive amount allows us to select only the best grapes and olives to our organic products, this combined with decades of experience in the making, (since 1959), grant us unparallel expertise in achieving top tier organic wines and olive oil. Is also worth noticing that the climate of La Mancha is in our favour, such a dry and hot environment makes that even without phytosanitary products grapes and olive grow in excellent condition.”
Q. What is the greatest challenge You’ve encountered while creating Your product?
A. “In a world of massified consumption and growing demand every year, keep making organic products is a challenge itself.
In our Campechano wines we can say that keeping the additive substance amount significantly lower is a challenge because even when some quantities are permitted, our goal is to elaborate our wines as natural as possible.
Regarding to the olive oil, we have a product called “Los Molinos Early Harvest” that is our most intense in flavour, colour and beneficial properties. This one also represents a challenge because the olives must be collected at the right time, too early and it would damage the plant, too late and the aforementioned properties will not be present in the final product”.
The winery has recently been awarded Four times in International Organic Awards competition:
Campechano Organic Tempranillo 2021
Awarded Gold by Organic Newspaper
Campechano Organic Airén 2021
Awarded Gold by Organic Newspaper
Los Molinos Organic Extra Virgin Olive Oil Early Harvest
Awarded Gold by Organic Newspaper
Campechano Organic Verdejo 2021
Awarded Silver by Organic Newspaper
Winery details:
Santa Catalina Cooperative,
Cooperative Street 2,
13240 · La Solana (Ciudad Real)
Phone: +(34) 926 632 194
Fax: +(34) 926 631 085
Email : export@santacatalina.es
Email : sales@santacatalina.es
Website : https://www.santacatalina.es/
