​Founded: 2005 by Jose Luis Durand

Winery location: Valle de Guadalupe, Mexico 

Region and grape source: Jose's relationships with select farmers in Valle de Guadalupe are as old as many of the vineyards themselves. He uses grapes from a number of sites in Valle de Guadalupe that he has been sourcing from for 30 years, 20 of which as a winemaker for his own winery.  

Annual production: 4,800 cases 

Number of wines made: 14

Vineyard location, elevation and grape varieties: From early on, Jose became intent with finding the most expressive sites in northern Baja. The vineyards he works with now are the same he has worked with for decades. All are located within Valle de Guadalupe at elevations between 900 and 1,300 ft and each represents the pinnacle of expression within the region for variety of grapes they grow. 

Winemaker: Jose Durand - Born in Chile and moved to Valle de Guadalupe in the 1970s to make wine for Chateau Domecq before starting Mexico's first premium wine brand in 2005. 

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Other notes:

• After working for several decades as the winemaker at Chateau Domecq, Jose found he no longer had interest in their high volume approach to business and winemaking, nor did he align with their approach to care for the land or intent of self-expression. Having discovered a vineyard that produced grapes whose quality and character were beyond what he could explain, he created a small batch of a few barrels of wine that would later become the first "Icaro", arguably Mexico's first uber premium wine. As Domecq had no interest in making wine of this kind, Jose eventually left his post at Domecq to start Bodegas Icaro with the intent of reaching the highest levels of expression of wine in Valle de Guadalupe. 

• In the nearly 2 decades that have passed since that point, Jose has dug as deeply as possible into what became an incredible blend of theory and passion, science and poetry. The current result is the launch of an ultra premium line of wines called Hypervinos that are founded on what he calls "aromatic enology". In this approach, all of the key decisions in the process of farming, harvest, and winemaking turn on ​aromatics rather than tannin, ph and sugar development as do all other traditional methods. He has essentially found that if the farming is approached from the right way, you can follow the development of aromatics to find the pinnacle expression of the grape – that is to say, it is at the zenith of aromatic expression that you will find the best possible combination of ripeness, sugar content, ph and tannin. It is hard to appreciate in words how radically different this approach is but when presented with a glass of his wines, the effect is overwhelmingly obvious. To summarize this concept is to try to fit in a paragraph the life's work of one of the most passionate and diligent people you have ever met, so we are far from doing it justice here, but suffice it to say that these wines are spectacular, iconoclastic, and unlike anything you've set your lips upon. 

• Icaro (or Icarus in English) borrows its name and significance from the Greek legend of Icarus. It intends to show the character of the winery in terms of their willingness to push the limits to find excellence, elegance and beauty in their wines. In their words, "We propose to change the objective of the oenological search, not seeing wine as an object of consumption; rather, the objective is not to concentrate, sweeten, and overly oak aged wine, so it tastes “delicious”, but rather to see wine as a subject of admiration and to encounter it where it is.  We seek to find the beauty that a vineyard can achieve by capturing time in a bottle. This difference may sound subtle, but its impact is astounding."