The real Isabel Ferrando

All truths being equal... these are some damned-fine wines.

This article is also available on Hudin.com to Personal & Commercial subscribers as well as the in-depth Châteauneuf-du-Pape Report for 2026.

There exist several wine brands which have taken on the names of historic women and in the process, grown to rather mythic status with time. Perhaps the most famous is Barbe-Nicole Ponsardin aka Veuve Clicquot. She definitely deserves a far better and more accurate film of her life someday, but her name (or at least the widowed version of it) graces one of the most iconic Champagnes there is. Then, at the other end of the spectrum there’s Anna de Codorníu from the Cava ‘Jumbotron’, Codorníu and is, a ‘different’ kind of sparkling described generously in a review once as having, a “somewhat flat-feeling finish.”

While both Barbe-Nicole and Anna did exist, I feel that their names (much as perhaps is the case with Dom Perignon) are used more to market wines than actually tell a real story. Despite my personal aversion to this, it continues with other wines brands at varying levels and probably won’t stop any time soon.

This is why, via the first time I fully tasted the Châteauneuf-du-Pape wines from “Isabel Ferrando” about two years ago, I thought that this perhaps was perhaps another such name. Given, the distinctly Spanish aspect to her name, I’d even invented a backstory that she was probably an 18th-century Flamenco dancer from Jerez de la Frontera who, upon killing her philandering husband one night, stole a horse and fled to the wilds of Provence. Once there, she managed to win a wine estate via a game of cards which she’d rigged. And, I continued to imagine that all the marketing materials in the present day would then state, “The wines produced today pay tribute to this legacy.”

Of course I did finally meet the real Isabel Ferrando.