Description

Raúl’s intuitive winemaking and its extraordinary results have won him acclaim as the world’s best winemaker by publications around the world. His began receiving accolades as soon as he began making wine. At the age of 22, in 1994, he produced his first vintage for his family’s winery in Spain’s northwestern Bierzo region. He was quickly baptized the leader of a renegade wine movement called The New Spain. In 2005, he left his family’s business to strike out on his own. He created Bodegas y Viñedos Raúl Pérez, which became the reference point for the Bierzo appellation. Since then, he has expanded his sphere of winemaking activity to include the appellations of Rías Baixas, Ribeira Sacra, and Tierra de León. But Raúl’s heart and his home have always been in Valtuille de Abajo, the village in Bierzo where his family has been tending vines for over 300 years. Raúl’s winemaking philosophy begins with a guiding principle: exert as little influence as possible on the grape. He understands every soil type and microclimate of each of his vineyards, but his knowledge of how his grapes ripen dictates how he makes his wine. The genius of Raúl’s knowledge allows him to turn his grapes — without chemical additives or systematized techniques — into what he calls “non-standardized wines.”