Raul Perez, La Vizcaina - El Rapolao, Bierzo 2020

The La Vizcaina bottling coming from two plots; one mid-slope and one in the lower part, together averaging 550m of elevation. The older parcel in the mid-slope was planted in the 1920s on hard clay and stony soils and the younger, lower plot in the 1980s on clay with more organic material. The blend meets salinity and perfume with silkiness and style. Whole bunch fermented in wood and kept on the skins for 30-45 days before 12 months aging in purely neutral 500L French casks.

First rising to prominence as the winemaker at his family estate Castro Ventosa, in 2004 he branched out on his own and now maintains a dizzying array of projects in Bierzo and further afield in Rias Baixas, Ribeira Sacra, and the Douro with Dirk Niepoort. One of his most exciting projects is particularly far-flung. It is a collaboration in South Africa with Swartland-icon Eben Sadie; producing two barrels of Monastrell that are famously hard to track down. In fact, it is near-impossible to keep track of all the labels with which Raul Perez is involved. He thinks it is close to 100. 

Both the La Vizcaina and Ultreia cellars are crammed to the rafters with barrels that contain either the next-big-thing, or purely experimental wines, in the truest sense of the word. Bierzo is still a region largely untapped by producers, as the great vineyards of the Northern Rhone or Burgundy once were too.

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