Region: Bierzo, Spain

Varietal: Mostly Mencía with Bastardo (Trousseau), Garnacha Tintorera (Alicante Bouschet)

Tasting notes: Floral, spicy aromas with hints of underbrush. Juicy, well-structured red fruit with great vibrancy and length on the palate. A long finish is marked by hints of herbs, coffee bean, and tomato leaf.

Producer: Raúl Pérez Pereira is universally considered to be one of the world’s most visionary winemakers. Since he produced his first vintage for his family’s winery in 1994 at the age 22, he has been in the forefront of the conversation about what has been called “The New Spain”. In 2005, he left his family business to strike out on his own, creating Bodegas y Viñedos Raúl Pérez, which quickly became the point of reference for the Bierzo appellation. In the intervening years, he has expanded his sphere of activity to include the appellations of Rías Baixas, Ribeira Sacra and Tierra de León, but his heart and his home remain in Valtuille de Abajo, the village in Bierzo where his family has been tending vines for well over 300 years. In addition to numerous other accolades, Raúl was named “Winemaker of the Year” by German publication Der Feinschmecker in 2014 and “Best Winemaker in the World” for 2015 by the French publication Bettane+Desseauve. In the February 2018 Decanter, Master of Wine Pedro Ballesteros wrote, “Raúl Pérez is the archetype of the intuitive winemaking genius.” A picture of Raúl in that same article is captioned, “Is this the best winemaker in the world?” Raúl would certainly not self-apply any of these superlatives. In fact, his genius is far exceeded by his humility and generosity of spirit. That humility comes through in his wines. These are not “winemaker” wines so much as they are unadulterated expressions of the villages and vineyards from which they hail.

Vineyard and Winemaking: Despite his traditional training, Pérez has gradually eschewed winemaking orthodoxy to capture and bottle the essence of the vineyards and soils where he works. In his reds, he searches for the most ideal maturation and maceration times for each vineyard. His wines are usually field blends of Mencía (it is standard to find Alicante Bouschet, Bastardo, Palomino, Dona Blanca, Godello or Malvasía mixed in the Bierzo vineyards) and are fermented with stems unless the grapes have been dehydrated. He claims to have found a balance between early harvesting and long macerations (two to five months). This allows him to preserve acidity, extract tannins gently and polymerize tannins through the use of natural oxygenation in oak. Pérez no longer uses cooling devices in his winery and his wines are aged either in foudres or used barrels. In recent times, he has been using flor (a veil of yeasts) to gain complexity and as a means of natural protection during the ageing process to avoid adding sulphur.