A Visit to Charlie Prymaka of Jugo Vins

Charlie Prymaka relocated from London to Majorca to start his new Jugo Vins project in 2020. On a recent trip to the island, I got in touch and arranged a quick visit.

When he first made the move, Charlie worked with Cati Ribot in her cellar in Santa Margalida. He produced his own wines under his new Jugo Vins label as well as assisting Cati with her Ve d'Avior project. Recently he has re-located further West to Santa Maria where he has some space within '7103 Petit Celler'. For new winemakers here, one of the main challenges is access to organic vineyards as they are relatively few and far between. Working out of this well-established organic winery gives Charlie access to some of the oldest organic Mantonegro vines on the island and he is also now closer to Palma where his CAV. wine store is located.

We arrived early one morning to the small village of Santa Margalida with a beautiful backdrop of mountains that separate this region of the island from the sea close to Deià. Charlie was already at work cleaning the outdoor area that stores his fermenting grape juice. We tasted all the recently tanked wines and talked about life pre-Jugo Vins.

Charlies was working for importer Caves de Pyrenes in London but dreamt of making wine. Spain was the primary choice, in part because of the lower start up costs. Charlie's partner Lauren has a connection to Majorca with her mother being born here so it seemed like the appropriate choice. It has taken him a while to navigate some of the local practices and the business politics but every year is getting better and you can see that in Charlie's wines.

I love the simplicity and honesty of the Jugo cuvées. Charlie is new to winemaking and he isn't trying to hide that fact. Instead it feels like we are being welcomed on the journey with him. Each vintage has more precision, direction and intensity. The wines are still very well priced and the message behind each bottle always seems to be "enjoy me!". In this sense, they seem so true to their place of origin. Unpretentious island wines to be experienced by anybody and their friends. And they make even more sense on a boat...

We currently have Charlie's light and juicy Molt Bo 2022 in stock. This is a red wine made from the local Mantonegro grape and has a strong red cherry character

Also we were lucky enough to get our hands on some litre bottles of his Pillow Talk 2021. This is a light blend of Syrah and Mantonegro and is very hard to come by now so don't hang around!