Raúl Pérez

Raúl Pérez was born in 1972 in Valtuille de Abajo, a small village in Bierzo, León - his family's winery, Castro Ventosa, traces grape growing in the village back to 1752. Raúl made his first vintage at Castro Ventosa in 1994, aged twenty-two. In 2003 he left the family estate to start his own label, Bodegas y Viñedos Raúl Pérez, and more or less immediately became the reference point for what Bierzo could be. He has since expanded into a multi-project operation that touches half the serious wine regions of northwestern Spain.

The Ultreia range takes its name from the pilgrim's cry on the Camino de Santiago - Ultreia et Suseia, "keep going beyond." The hierarchy is Burgundian in structure: Ultreia St. Jacques as the entry-level Bierzo red (the winery's largest bottling), alongside single-vineyard wines including the Godello-based Ultreia La Claudina from a sandy parcel in Valtuille. Mencía from old Bierzo vines on slate, made with native yeasts and very little else.

Sketch is his most famous wine - a single-vineyard Albariño from Rías Baixas made with his friend Rodrigo Méndez. Originally bottle-aged for two to three months submerged in the Arousa Estuary and retrieved by divers, the underwater treatment is now applied only to a small research portion after a spoilage incident; commercial bottles are land-aged. It is a stunt and a serious wine at the same time, and commands stratospheric prices. Beyond that there's La Vizcaína de Vinos (launched 2011 in Bierzo, with his nephew César Márquez), El Pecado (Ribeira Sacra), Atalier (more Rías Baixas Albariño), and Castro Candaz (Ribeira Sacra, with Méndez). He also continues to oversee several of Castro Ventosa's Valtuille bottlings (Rapolao, Cova de la Raposa, Cepas Centenarias).

The philosophy is terroir obsession without ideology. Native yeasts. Minimal intervention. Not natural-wine in the strict sense - he'll add sulphur when he needs to - but aligned with the ethos. His real signature is a willingness to experiment (the underwater Sketch being the emblem) paired with reverence for old-vine Mencía and the Atlantic-side whites.

Beyond the wines: Raúl has guided a long list of younger Spanish producers through his cellar. Envínate, the Fedellos cohort, and many others have worked in or around his orbit. Much of the generation that reshaped Spanish wine after 2000 passed through Valtuille.