Josh Kniesel and Josie Cleeve farm grapes and make wine in the Marina Alta district of Alicante. As is evident from their names, neither are Spanish by birth, but both found their way to this corner of Mediterranean Spain independently. Josie’s family moved to Alicante from London when she was a small child. Josh’s family is from Germany, but they have a summer house in the area, so he went back and forth throughout his childhood.

Josh took his oenology degree at Hochscule Geisenheim, one of the most prestigious and demanding wine academies in the world. He later went on to take some supplemental courses in Tarragona, and it was during this time that he met Josie at the small village bar where she worked. They spent a few years living in Valladolid while Josh worked at Belondrade before moving back to the Marina Alta to start their own project in 2017. They took over and restored the tiny old cooperative facility in the village of Alcalalí, where they also operate a shop and wine bar that is worth a detour for natural wine lovers.

The Marina Alta is a small sub-region of the Alicante D.O. that takes the shape of a cape stretching out in the Mediterranean Sea. The viticultural tradition in this area goes back as far as the Iberian settlements that were active in the area between the 6th and 1st centuries BCE. These early peoples likely picked up the practice of vine-tending from the Phoenicians, whose presence in the region has been documented as far back as the 9th century BCE.

Today, the old bush-trained vines grow on small plots (smaller than 0.5ha) amidst almond, olive and orange plantations. The principal varieties are Moscatel de Alejandría for whites and Giró for reds. Agriculture here is manual labor. The soils of the mountain terraces are rocky and calcareous while the valley has a higher percentage of clay. Josh and Josie only work with dry-farmed bush vines on plots that have never been sprayed. Most of the vineyards are not worked by tractor to avoid compression of the soils. The grapes are picked in August, when potential alcohols are still moderate. This ensures that the resulting wines retain freshness and benefit from the natural stability afforded by a low pH.

To give an authentic reflection of their natural environment, the wines ferment spontaneously with indigenous yeast (industrial yeast has never been introduced to the cellar). They are neither fined nor filtered and there are no applications of additives at any time during the winemaking or bottling process (“zero / zero”). All fermentation and élevage is carried out in steel, glass, fiberglass and clay amphorae. In sum, Josh and Josie’s wines are beautifully pure transmutations of the Mediterranean sunshine that are an absolute joy to drink.