Guerinda `El Maximo` Crianza

Maria Yoanna Abete

"Run by Maria and Yoanna Abete alongside Juanma Lerga (Yoanna’s husband), it is the quintessential family winery with product rather than profit at the core of their ethos. Many of the wineries we visited were happy to whisk us around there winery and cellar before getting down to business in the tasting room. Not so here. Maria and Juanma immediately hustled us to their rickety old 4x4 and drove us around some of their 15 different plots of land. Maria and Yoanna Abete of Bodegas Maximo Abete are amongst the youngest and most dynamic winemakers we’ve come across in Spain. Alongside Joanna’s husband, Juanma Lerga, this tightknit group are the quintessential family winery with product rather than profit at the core of their ethos. Dotted around the highlands of Navarra’s western most Baja Montana and Ribera Alta subzones, the vineyards are hidden up treacherous mountain paths or buried deep amidst garrigue-like scrubland with rosemary and lavender in abundance."