Philosophy

Since 1987, Jorge Ordóñez’s personal crusade has been to seek out and preserve Spain’s rich history of grape growing and winemaking. As Earth’s largest grape growing region, Spain has been tending vines and producing wine for several millennia. Jorge’s goal is to champion and preserve his homeland’s wealth of indigenous grape varieties. His philosophy is centered on the belief that Spain’s potential lies in its bounty of ancient vineyard sites planted with the oldest clones of indigenous cultivars. Unfortunately, the current trend in Spain is the replantation of the country’s oldest vineyard sites with higher yielding clones and international varieties, on trellises. Jorge Ordóñez Selections fights this trend by representing producers that embody our philosophy: what makes Spain unique is an extensive history of viticulture and enology, and a wealth of extremely old vineyards of indigenous varieties.

Every aspect of our business is focused on maintaining the integrity of these unique vines and varieties. By working exclusively with artisan producers who employ non-interventional, authentic methods of grape growing and winemaking, w e produce and represent honest wines with a sense of history, culture, and place.
We were the first Spanish wine broker in the United States to control every point of the shipping environment in order to protect the integrity of our wines. We insist on 100% refrigerated shipping from our wineries to the consolidation point in Bilbao, and we require refrigerated reefer shipping containers to our warm climate customers year round. Cool climate customers are required to ship reefer between March and November. We require that all of our distributors have temperature controlled warehouses.

Quality is our first priority, even when it may put us at a financial disadvantage. We maintain strict controls not only at the blending stage but through all steps in the winemaking process. These controls are expected of all of our producers, even those with whom we have no ownership stake. We spend several hundred thousand dollars a year on analysis by ETS Laboratories. Also, Jorge and his team have proven to be some of the best wine blenders in the business. Many of their cuvées have become internationally recognized benchmarks for their region and varietal.

After decades of hard work, we are now realizing the fruits of our labor. The international market for Spanish wine and gastronomy has grown considerably, and continues to do so. Early successes with entry level brands have made Spain the go-to region for value oriented wine. The next phase in our growth is to demonstrate to the market that all of our wines represent significant quality, regardless of the price point, and that Spanish wines deserve a place amongst the world’s best.