The History of Cardaba Estate

The Finca Cardaba Winery was founded in 1997 by the Sancha de Frutos brothers who were united by a tradition of wine founded by their father in the sixties.

Finca Cardaba Estate can be found in the south of the village of Sacramenia in the province of Segovia where the old church of the Priory of Saint Maria de Cardaba has been conserved.

The church dates back to the year 937 when Count Fernan Gonzalez and his wife Doña Sancha donated the church of Saint Maria of Cardaba to the Monastery of Saint Meter of Arlanza.

Like many priories, they were dedicated to farming the land. Among the many crops cultivated was the vine which is illustrated in the Monastery accounts in the year 1337-1338. The yearly production was about 100 large flagons of wine (16 litres each)

But in the next century Saint Maria of Cardaba was in dire straits. There were only two monks and a few locals living at the Estate. The abbot lived many kilometres away in Arlanza in the region of Burgos.

An exchange was made in the year 1488 between the Arlanza Priory and the Sacremenia Monastery. The head abbot of Sacramenia Don Juan de Acebes announced that ¨Saint Maria of Cardaba will be a farming estate belonging to the Cistercian monastery with civil and criminal jurisdiction symbolised by the existence of the gallows within its territory and is under the jurisdiction of the farm manager¨.

After the Disentitlement in 1835 the Estate became privately owned.