Down in the caves with the Wine King of Castilla La Mancha
Tomelloso has its own rhythm. Nothing staged, nothing dressed up, just a working town in La Mancha where wine history runs under the streets and modern projects sit quietly on top of it.
We went there specifically for Beat Wines, the wine-bar-meets-wine-hunters project led by Elías López Montero and Nuria Moya, a place that has quickly become one of the most interesting wine rooms in the region.
Inside, the mood is unforced: vinyl playing, tapas drifting, bottles opened because they’re worth talking about. Their “wine hunters” identity isn’t branding it’s practice. They look for wines with identity, attitude, and story, whether from La Mancha or from the edges of the winemaking world.
We began with Ulterior Garnacha Parcela 6, from Finca El Romeral, fermented half in whole clusters and half destemmed, and aged 11 months in clay tinajas in the Verum caves. A Garnacha that feels lifted and bright, the kind that resets expectations about what inland Spain can do. Tim Atkin’s 2025 report placed this wine among the Top 10 in Spain, scoring it 96 points.
Then came Verum Patagonia María Victoria, a 100% Malbec from the Alto Valle del Río Negro in Patagonia, aged eight months in French oak and concrete, with a tiny production of around 9,800 bottles. A wine of violets, dark fruit, fig and mineral spice, expressive and precise, the kind of Malbec that carries Patagonia’s altitude and wind in its structure.
Together the two bottles say something clear: Verum isn’t local by limitation; it’s local by conviction, and global by curiosity.
Elías was in the room relaxed, generous, talking vineyards the way people talk about neighbours. Somewhere between Garnacha and Malbec he said, almost casually:
“If you’re around tomorrow, I’ll open the caves for you.”
Tomorrow was a Spanish bank holiday. He opened them for us anyway.
The cuevas beneath Bodegas Verum aren’t staged or sanitised. They’re part of Tomelloso’s historical wine and distillation infrastructure, hand-cut tunnels holding cool, steady air, with clay tinajas resting in alcoves where fermentations once breathed. Walking through them is less a visit and more a shift in perspective.
Once you start looking, Tomelloso gives itself away in small details. The luceras, modest brick or iron-grilled vents scattered along the pavements, mark the points where the underground caves breathe. They weren’t built to be noticed. Their job was simple: let light in, let air circulate, and release the CO₂ from fermentation. Functional, almost invisible, they’re a reminder that much of the town’s wine history still runs below street level.
Bodegas Verum represents the modern expression of a family that has been involved in wine and distillation since 1788, and whose current winery was founded in 2005 by María Victoria Montero and her four children. Today the project spans ecological viticulture in La Mancha, tinaja work, parcel wines, and the Patagonia range, a portfolio built on continuity, not fashion.
It’s no surprise, then, that Tim Atkin MW once referred to Elías, on his excellent podcast Cork Talk, as “the King of Castilla-La Mancha.”
Not theatrics, just a fair assessment of the influence, range and consistency of his work.
Our Amphora Delights tour already works; our guests tell us that after every tour. Yet we take our time with these routes. We visit, revisit, cross-check, and walk the ground ourselves, because a tour is only as strong as the decisions behind it. Even when a journey is already loved by our guests, we keep looking for the next detail that makes it sharper, deeper, more authentic. Adding Tomelloso will add another layer to the route, the quiet depth beneath the surface, the part of La Mancha that only reveals itself underground. A genuine deepening of the journey.
This is where you come in, because this tour isn’t really about lists of wineries, it’s about you walking into places where history still shapes the present, tasting wines where they’re truly made, and tasting wines where they’re truly made. It about discovering regions that reveal themselves only when you take the time to look properly.
If that’s the kind of travel you’re looking for — where you don’t just visit a region but begin to belong to it then you’re exactly the kind of guest Amphora Delights was created for.
Our 2026 edition is now open.
Amphora Delights - Wine and Culinary Journey in Castilla-La Mancha
Come underground with us.