Marble Hill Cellars

Marble Hill Cellars holds a collection of wines that are specially selected for their authenticity, sense of place (terroir), balance, harmony, and a uniqueness that comes from great people committed to quality. The selections MHC represent taste the way genuine terroir driven wines are supposed to taste, hence the mission statement:

To provide wines that taste they way they are supposed to taste.

Alexandra Elman, owner of MHC, primarily represents small, artisan, Spanish vino de autor (signature) wineries that are either owned by families, individual winemakers or by small groups of friends committed to producing wines that are authentic expressions of Spanish native grape varieties and exhibit a sense of place (terroir: climate, soil and altitude) in which they fervently believe. With this, Alexandra and her team have developed the following vision:

MHC prefers family-owned bodegas with their own vineyards (preferably unirrigated or minimally irrigated) or those who work closely with quality growers under long-term associations. We look for winemakers with a dedication to producing wines that reflect their own unique tastes and the uniqueness of their vineyard sites and grapes, not perceived tastes "that the market is asking for."

MHC does not represent wines that conform to the conventional canon:

• wines so dark that you can't see the bottom of the glass
• wines that taste more of oak than grapes
• wines with jammy, overripe fruit
• wines low in acid
• "dry" red or white wines with pronounced residual sugar
• wines with high levels of alcohol (we prefer 13% - 13.5% and lower, but will consider wines of 14% on occasion, but only if particularly well balanced).

MHC does not believe in wines that rely on overripe grapes that are submitted to overly long macerations in order to achieve dark color, high alcohol and so-called "flavor."

Although MHC will not intervene in the winemaking process, abuse of battonage, barrel fermentation in new oak and ageing in improperly prepared new French and American oak barrels is discouraged. Overzealous application of these popularized cellar practices, in our opinion, tends to obscure both the taste of the grape variety and the sense of terroir and marks the wines with flavors that do not come from the vineyards. Lightly filtered wines are acceptable.

MHC does not represent wines with artificial closures, i.e., plastic "corks," screw caps and composed corks with chemical binders. The producers that MHC represent are encouraged to buy the best corks possible and have them tested before use.

There is an ever increasing market for the types of wines that MHC represents. MHC continually seeks wines that adhere to the same criteria in other traditional wine producing regions of the world.

Stay tuned as we unearth more of the world’s hidden wine treasures.