Natural wine tasting at... One of Spain's first natural winemakers - without knowing it

Marijke van der Ploeg lives with her husband in Portugal, where they transform a ruin into a little palace. She prefers to sit in her chaotic writing office, on the terrace or in the car - in search of unusual, natural wines. For the column Natural Wine Tasting at...she visits natural wineries in Europe and takes you into the world of natural wine.

100% Italian, born and raised in Scotland, natural winemaker in Spain: Fabio Bartolome is far from average. Does the same apply to his wines? I find out while visiting the Vinos Ambiz winery in Sierra de Gredos, west of Madrid.

Fabio has been making wines here with minimal intervention since 2013, but his winemaking history goes back further. 'In 2003 I moved to Madrid for a job as a translator,' he says. 'Besides my office work, I wanted to do something interesting, so I decided to make wine on the weekends.' Why wine? He doesn't have a precise reason: 'I just always liked wine and decided to go for it.'

And why natural wine? That too is not a conscious choice on Fabio's part. 'To be honest, I didn't know anything about making wine. I thought it was logical to simply press grapes and ferment the juice, with no additives: that's wine.' Without knowing it, this made him one of Spain's first natural winemakers.

The cover: his resignation

For ten years, Fabio's weekends have been filled with wine. He rents vineyards, learns from other winemakers and gets more and more pleasure from the work. 'I made wine in garages or other places, wherever I had a bit of space. I took more and more holidays and worked fewer and fewer hours as a translator, because wine had priority,' he recounts those days.

This followed - not entirely unexpectedly - his resignation in 2013. 'It was the necessary push to focus entirely on wine,' says Fabio, laughing An empty building of a former wine cooperative in El Tiemblo, at the foot of the Sierra de Gredos mountain range, becomes home to Vinos Ambiz. It is a relatively unknown wine region, with high-altitude vineyards and a continental climate, but Fabio sees potential.