Raúl Pérez: The Adventurer Among Old Vines
- macynguyen63
- 3 days ago
- 2 min read
I don’t know about you, but to me wine is always a journey and Raúl Pérez is the kind of guide who leads you through foggy valleys, over rocky soils, into the very breath of the vineyard.
He was born in 1972 in Valtuille de Abajo, a Bierzo village where the earth seems to exhale softly through each vine. His family had been making wine at Castro Ventosa for centuries. Yet from an early age, Raúl chose a slightly different path: not just making wine, but listening to it.
By 2003, he stepped out of his family’s shadow with a dream distilled into one bottle: Ultreia. The word means “onward” in Latin, and it’s the compass he has followed ever since. Onward through forgotten parcels of twisted old vines. Onward into long fermentations with native yeasts. Onward beneath the sea itself, where Albariño once lay cradled by waves before returning, changed, to the cellar.
He refuses to polish or tame the truth. No new oak to cover the fruit, no controlled temperatures to smooth out the edges—just old vines, wild ferments, and the song of Bierzo’s stones. As Raúl puts it: “Nurturing the land and allowing the land to express itself is the priority. Everything else follows.”
Pedro Ballesteros, MW, called him “the archetype of the intuitive winemaking genius.” France’s Bettane+Desseauve named him Best Winemaker in the World in 2015. But those accolades, impressive as they are, only skim the surface. The real story lies in the glass: wines that taste like weathered hillsides and ancient roots, wines that carry both risk and grace.
So when you open a bottle from Raúl Pérez, you acttualy tasting the heartbeat of Bierzo. And Raúl? He’s the translator, guiding us not with flash or fanfare, but with truth.
Macy Nguyen
Curious Cork Popper