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When Michelangelo completed his statue of Moses in 1513, legend has it that he was so moved he struck its knee with his hammer and cried: "Now speak!" This story inspired Juan Tirado and José Civantos when they founded Bodegas Habla in Extremadura in 1999. On 200 hectares of slate soils near Trujillo they make wines that genuinely speak, through intensity, precision and an architecture that has even won art prizes. The numbered releases are deliberately one-offs: each number appears only once and is never repeated.
More about Habla
Speak! How a Renaissance genius became a wine name
For eight years the entrepreneurs Juan Tirado and José Civantos searched for the perfect terroir for their dream. They found it, of all places, where Francisco Pizarro once set out to conquer Peru: in Trujillo, in the heart of Extremadura. The slate soil is meagre, the summers scorching, the winters bitterly cold, conditions that destroy weak vines and drive strong ones to their best. With the oenologists Florent Dumeau from Bordeaux and Eduardo de José Prada they formed a team that put Extremadura on Spain's wine map.
Copper, slate and gravity
The bodega itself is a statement. Designed by GAP Arquitectos, the 12,000-square-metre building merges with the landscape: half underground, to save energy and to process the grapes by gravity on the Roman model. Its copper skin develops a patina over the years, much like a good wine. The concept won the Extremadura Architecture Award. Inside, clinical stainless-steel zones for fermentation alternate with atmospheric spaces of black slate and chestnut wood, a contrast that also shapes the wines.
The Numbers series: no repeats
What other wineries would see as a constraint, Habla has made a principle: each number appears only once. Habla Nr 29, made from Cabernet Franc, Malbec and Cabernet Sauvignon, will never be produced again; once it sells out, Nr 30 and Nr 31 follow. This forces the winemakers to treat every vintage as a work of art in its own right. The numbers stand for single-varietal wines or small blends in limited editions; Habla Nr 30, for instance, is a single-varietal Syrah from organic farming.
From silence to beneath the sea
Alongside the Numbers there are more approachable lines: Habla la Tierra as the entry point and Habla del Silencio (silence speaks) as a layered blend. And then there is Habla del Mar, a wine that really does mature beneath the sea. Fermented in pressure tanks on the seabed, it explores what pressure, temperature and movement do to wine. It is a research project that shows that at Habla it is never only about tradition, but always also about what wine might yet become.