Jorge Ordóñez

About Jorge Ordóñez

“When nobody cared about Spanish wines, I was there.” – Jorge Ordóñez

Jorge Ordóñez left college in 1983 to join Distribuciones Ordóñez. From 1984-1987, Jorge began managing the company and quadrupled the business. He introduced many prestigious wine brands for the first time, several of which would follow him to the United States.

When Jorge arrived in the US, there were fewer than 10 labels of Spanish wine being sold in the entire country. The market was dominated by California, France, and Italy. Jorge saw an opportunity to introduce more Spanish wines to the market and founded Fine Estates from Spain, Inc. He made commitments to quality including being an early adopter of refrigeration for shipping. He was the first importer to require and establish refrigeration from winery to shipping truck to warehouse to shipping container, and to distributors with refrigerated warehouses.

Jorge’s work resulted in the creation of many of the most well-known Spanish brands in the US, and he was a founding member at many of these wineries. Jorge began consulting on production and blending millions of liters per year, inventing and registering brands, and designing labels. Many appellations and producers came into the limelight as the result of this partnership and work and resulted in the creation of myriad labels that would never have existed otherwise.

Jorge had an early commitment to established quality producers from Spain from established appellations including Rioja, Ribera del Duero, Navarra, and Montilla-Moriles. Jorge made an early commitment to differentiate by finding new appellations, so he toured Spain for 10+ years to become the first exporter/US importer of the following appellations/varieties: Albariño/Rías Baixas, Treixadura/Ribeiro, Godello/Valdeorras, Tinta de Toro/Toro & Zamora, Txakoli de Getaria, Navarra, Garnacha de Aragón/Calatayud & Borja, Priorat, Montsant, Pedro Ximénez/Montilla-Moriles, Manchuela, Monastrell/Jumilla, Muscat of Alexandria/Málaga, Canary Islands, and Mallorca.

Jorge’s portfolio has always focused on Indigenous varieties, traditional viticulture, dry farming, and organic practices. He has spent thirty years building and creating brands, and today, the Ordóñez portfolio consists of fine, medium-small sized family-owned estate wineries. It is a portfolio of 15 family-owned producers (many of which have been represented in this portfolio since the beginning) who share the same obsessive commitment to quality. Five of the wineries are owned wholly by Jorge in D.O.’s he pioneered, producing wines with knowledge gained after 15 years as a consultant/negociant.

With knowledge gained as a blender, consultant, marketer, and négociant, the style of wine as a producer has evolved in the last several years. Expect more freshness, higher acidity, balanced wines with concentration and power where geography and climate require, but with low pH/high acidity to maintain freshness. There is a refined usage of oak: new where fruit can support or require it, but a growing usage of old and large format barrels.

Jorge’s children Victor and Monica work in the family business and are an integral part of running Jorge Ordóñez Selections. They have also started a label of their own within the portfolio. See Quadrum for more information.

About Jorge’s namesake labels:

Bodegas Ordóñez first began working Rueda in 2011. This is Jorge’s third stint in Rueda after founding two other pioneering wineries in the region. As one of the pioneers and champions of traditional Spanish viticulture outside of Rioja, Ribera del Duero, and Jerez, Jorge has always valued Verdejo tremendously. The white variety of the Spanish medieval court, Verdejo has a rich history of producing high quality white wines in Spain.

Jorge’s philosophy has always focused on the old clones of Verdejo planted in the southeastern sub-appellation of Rueda, where due to the sandy soils many of the head trained vineyards are ungrafted or pre-phylloxeric. Bodegas Ordóñez works with estate vineyards and purchased fruit from vineyards. All of the vineyards are head trained, dry farmed, and planted between 1885 and 1970. Both Nisia and Nisia las Suertes are aged on the lees for a minimum of eight months.

Part of the Jorge Ordonez portfolio