He wound (winery, winery) in the Asturian town of Nava where the wine is made. Sidra M. Zapatero -known as the ‘Sistine Chapel’ cider for its traditional wooden barrels and for the great prestige of its wines – changes hands. But not to those of just anyone in a sector based on family business. It will be the well-known professional Cele Foncueva, former national rally champion and one of the most recognized cider professionals in this field who, starting with the production campaign that is about to begin, will take charge of the management and production of the Zapatero brand, which can produce up to 300,000 liters per year.
The agreement, which is not a sale but a temporary transfer after which it will be decided who stays with the business, joins the paths of two of the most relevant cider sagas in Asturias, which have always had respect for the traditional production methods and the search for the highest quality standards with limited productions and careful attention to detail. In any case, this is not the first foray of the Foncuevas into the Nava cider sector, considered the most prestigious in Asturias. Cele’s father, Luis Foncueva, one of the great llagareros (producers) in history, now deceased, recovered the then defunct El Sareganu brand that belonged to an uncle of his and with which he marketed a selected high-quality cider.
Member of a saga
Cele Foncueva (Sariego, 1962) is part of a cider saga that dates back to the end of the 19th century, when Guadalupe Vigón began the family production of fermented apple juice. However, the now head of Sidra M. Zapatero could not have had a better teacher than his father, Luis, a cider artisan who won numerous quality awards in the most demanding competitions, such as those in Nava and Villaviciosa. In addition, Cele was a key in the technological modernization of the wineries at the end of the 20th century, being awarded for this by the Asturian Government, at the request of the Association of Asturian Winemakers and the Cider Apple Producers.
Spanish rally champion in 1990, once he left automobile racing, Foncueva decided to focus on the development of inventions to modernize and facilitate the work of cider production, giving free rein to some concerns that he displayed from a very young age. His first exclusive consisted of replacing the wood of the apple crushing presses with stainless steel, in order to achieve circular hydraulic presses that soon became part of the machinery of numerous wineries in the region.
Another of his inventions was the cider mixer, an ingenuity that served to put an end to the custom of mixing the drink by putting a truck full of bottles on a road full of potholes. He also avoided transportation of the bottles from the wine press to the cider houses in a horizontal position. They are just two examples of how much it has collaborated in the modernization of a sector that in the last three decades has made a technological leap that seemed unthinkable given its historical traditional and immobile nature.
Despite his experience and extensive experience in the sector, the challenge that Foncueva now faces is not minor. Maybe that’s why he takes it with such enthusiasm. The winery that he now manages was founded by another of the great myths of Asturian cider, Manolo Zapatero. The prestige he achieved as a producer is well illustrated by the fact that his wines were described at the time as the “Moet & Chandon of cider”. This teacher started in the activity as a child and with the help of his father in Sidra Villabona. As time passed, he decided to become independent and founded, together with Gonzaga Sánchez Mendoza, Sidra El Bombé in a winery that was in the old town of the Naveta capital. In the 50s of the last century it took over the Sidra Guzmán facilities and in 1960 it began to market the emblematic Zapatero Sidra. Its success was absolute, it won the Villaviciosa quality competition twice and demand surpassed a production linked to local tradition and always faithful to wooden barrels. He even had to start marketing as M. Zapatero because there were unscrupulous people who copied the brand that was printed on the corks in those days before the label, mandatory only since 2001.
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In his winepress on Riega de Nava street, Zapatero only had two fiber deposits, which he used exclusively for racking tasks (mixing the cider from the different barrels to find the exact touch) that he always carried out in the month of March. Furthermore, it followed the Naveta tradition of making it later than in other areas of the region, which, for many, is at the basis of the prestige of local cider.
Zapatero died in 2001 and, since then, his daughter Elena has ensured the continuity of a legacy of tradition and quality which now passes into the hands of Foncueva, another of the mythical surnames that have made history in the world of cider.