No Hay Vida Sin Pecado (Wine, Food and other sins) – Sidecar – Seven Sins Wine (Siete Pecados)

We are No Hay Vida Sin Pecado, Wine, Foods and Other Sins. Something more than a small Rioja winery, driven by the tenacity of four dreamers – two Wine-producer, a restaurateur and a designer – related in one way or another with the world of wine. The winery is located in Spain, in La Rioja, specifically in the locality of Oyón (Rioja Alavesa), cradle of great wines from this guarantee of origin.

Several years ago we started this unique project with the purpose of giving a new look to the world of Rioja wine. From this dream the Siete Pecados were born, a suggestive and complicated project as much by the own wines development as for the creation of a different image. Reasons that led us to rethink everything from scratch: high quality wines with different personalities, born in the minority Rioja varietals, like the Tempranillo Peludo and the Graciano, which come from our 55 acres of vineyards with an average of 58 years old, although we have some vineyards over 100 years, which joined to the excellent location and the selection of these minority and indigenous varieties, guarantees the quality of our wines. The work on the field begins long before the planting of the vineyard. The first is the choice of suitable land for wine we are looking for, must be high ground, with poor soils with very low cultivation. Always thinking that the vineyards planted later will not suffer the use of chemical treatments, so they should be fields with a maximum salubriousness. All these features can be summarized by the old vineyards, which ensure and guarantee the quality of our grapes. Another of the fundamentals we are based on is not using chemical fertilizers. It brings many benefits at the moment of the elaboration of wines in the cellar, as we will see, we fertilize the soil exclusively with organic fertilizers. All work done from here are manual, (to prune, to weed, to harvest), trusting in the perfect communion between the man and the earth. That’s why the production capacity is not so high, about 250.000 liters / year, which 50 % are assigned to our wines.

Once the grapes reach the winery, our every determination is to bring the philosophy of the vineyard to the winemaking.

We start selecting manually the grapes in the reception hopper, throwing out all the grapes we do not consider valid for our wines. It get destemmed and introduced into the fermentation tanks, macerating in these for the time we estimate necessary, based only on the tasting to decide when to end the maceration. During this process the wine gets pumped over twice daily to extract the maximum from the grapes. Here begins the real challenge and one of the things that makes us a winery, at least special. First we do not use tartaric acid, because the land we choose and the our choice of land and the absence of chemicals, (potash, nitrates, …), it makes that the wines develop a total acidity very balanced, which allows to take for granted that these are wines with a long life ahead, since the total acidity is much more stable than the volume which was rectified with tartaric acid. We neither use adedd tannin, which is now applied in 100% of all wineries, our wine keep fermented in wood, to utilize its natural tannins. Another feature of our wine is the fermentation without the use of cultured yeasts. The grapes we bring from our land have enough bacteria because they haven’t been killed on the fields by chemical treatments. And last, we have to mention that our wines contains metabisulfite in extremely low levels, forcing us to make weekly tastings to observe its evolution.

All these methods not only develop a natural product, they are also wines without any external alteration in taste and smell.

Following, we introduce the wine in french and american oak barrels and, once again, the tasting is the only criterion to decide that the wine is ready.

Our efforts to find the most natural wine as possible, as much in the processes described above and as in the tasting, leads us to not filtering or stabilize by cold. We consider these methods are fully aggressive and demaging to the wine. Finally, we performed a second selection on the finished wine, only the best wines of the annual production is fit to the bottling of Seven Sins.

The haptic characteristics of wines tell us about a very complex, with many nuances. Each one of them is provided with a captivating and different personality. Every sin reflexs itself in each of these wines which have not been chosen at random but have been developed by looking at the maximum of complicity with each of them.These are wines with low maturing (except Laziness – La Pereza – has increased sleeping time in barrel and bottle… it could not be in another way), it makes our wine honest, without artful devices. The grapes used are different blendings of Tempranillo, Tempranillo Peludo and Graciano from our best and oldest vineyards. The name and the image from the Siete Pecados also serves to define even more our transgressive personality away from any cliché and open, as you supose, to the greatest dose of pleasure. The design has greatly influenced the development of the wine itself. Every bottle tells a story. Each sin is represented as a way to evoke different feelings in the viewer. Lust – La Lujúria – is wrapped in a woman’s stocking, a evocative sensation when you touch the bottle. Envy – La Envidia – is Desiring everything around it, therefore its mirror finish that reflects and captures its environment. Laziness – La Pereza – as just out of a cemetery of bottles in which it had been laying indefinitely, covered with dust and with slanted text, ’cause the bottle is pleased to be laying. In another bottle we found a Anger (La Ira) attack as we saw a burned label… we couldn’t avoid it. The Pride – La Soberbia – always above the rest, standing out, in this case, with Swarovski crystals. Not even the fork stand on the embrace of the Gluttony – La Gula – leaving it completely useless after so much use and abuse. At least, to get to hold on longer, untouched, the Greed – La Avaricia – kept under a lock.

And as you already know: There is no life without sin.

Luis Palacios Winemaker Siete Pecados

Seven Sins Wine – Siete Pecados – Lust (Lujúria)

Lust – la Lujuria

My thoughts caress you, touch you just looking at you, spying, imagining, satisfying my desire to caress you, just looking at you, just imagine…

Seven Sins Wine – Siete Pecados – Laziness (Pereza)

Laziness – la Pereza

My time goes by, my hours get lost, my sensations are spend but this absurd inactivity satisfies me… all I wish is nothing, a nothing that gives me everything.

Seven Sins Wine – Siete Pecados – Anger (Ira)

Anger – la Ira

I react instinctively, I attack, attack the others, I also attack myself… my vital momentum is the anger, I suspect… I don’t know… but when I don’t recognize something, I react instinctively, I attack, attack the others, I also attack myself …

Seven Sins Wine – Siete Pecados – Envy (Envidia)

Envy – la Envidia

I wish it. I want it, doesn’t matter what or how, especially if it’s yours, your lost satisfy me provided that it is in my favor… it is not comprehensible, I need it… actually it was always mine.

Seven Sins Wine – Siete Pecados – Gluttony (Gula)

Gluttony – la Gula

Nothing satisfies me, nothing saturates me, nothing calms my sensation of emptiness, of hollowness. Until the infinity everything turns to nothing in front of my voracious appetite for all or for nothing.

Seven Sins Wine – Siete Pecados – Pride (Soberbia)

Pride – la Soberbia

My pride forces me and my arrogance subordinates me to the uncontrollable desire to extinguish you, to transform you in my indifference… you or me, me or the rest. Just me.

Seven Sins Wine – Siete Pecados – Greed (Avaricia)

Greed – la Avaricia

I will never lose it, nobody will ever take it from me… I accumulate, I build a forged jail for the desire to posses, it doesn’t matter what, but just posses it.