Raúl Pérez and the Structure of a Regional Voice
Begin in Valtuille de Abajo, a village where winegrowing has always been more than commerce. The Pérez family has tended vines here since the mid eighteenth century, and their bodega, Castro Ventosa, traces its winemaking lineage to 1752. Across the village, old-vine Mencía grows in a lattice of small parcels, many of them mixed plantings. The winery itself is an accumulation of practices rather than a monument to any single vintage. Its style reflects what has always been true in Bierzo: that place is understood slowly, through repetition, and that character is a matter of site, season, and patience.
Raúl Pérez learned the craft within that frame. His first vintages were made in the family cellar, working within a tradition that did not ask to be named. In 2003, he stepped out to create Ultreia, a personal project built on older vines, spontaneous fermentations, longer macerations, and aging in used wood or neutral vessels. The name, borrowed from the language of Camino pilgrims, meant to go further. The wines followed suit. They sought freshness through restraint, texture through structure, and clarity through time. What made the project distinctive was not technique alone, but the way method aligned with intention. Ultreia was not a rejection of family style. It was a focused rephrasing of what the vines already offered.
In 2010, Pérez returned to Castro Ventosa. The influence of his own cellar came with him, but the integration was subtle rather than declarative. The young winemaker César Márquez, Raúl’s nephew, had been working alongside him and gradually assumed greater responsibility. By 2017, César was managing the day-to-day operations at the family estate while Raúl remained involved in blending and direction. This structure allowed Castro Ventosa to remain rooted in tradition while absorbing a more exacting vocabulary. It also allowed Raúl to continue building outward.
One result of that expansion was La Vizcaína de Vinos, launched in 2011 as a partnership between Raúl and César. The goal was to treat Valtuille’s hillside parajes not as contributors to a generic blend, but as individual voices worth isolating. Wines like El Rapolao and Las Gundiñas revealed that Bierzo’s complexity did not depend on elevation alone, but also on slope, exposition, and vine density. These bottlings made the case for a new level of specificity within the region. They also trained drinkers to read labels as maps rather than brands.
As Ultreia grew, so did its logistical demands. Saint Jacques, once a modest village wine, had become Bierzo’s ambassador abroad. Rather than simplify the blend, Pérez responded by building a dedicated 400,000-liter winery to support the wine’s growth without losing precision. He gained support from several backers, including chef José Andrés, who publicly affirmed his commitment to the project. This facility gave Saint Jacques the space to remain a regional wine in character even as its production reached commercial scale. It also allowed Raúl to hold fast to his method: sorting by parcel, fermenting each lot separately, and blending for balance rather than consistency.
Even as he scaled Saint Jacques, Pérez moved further into the hills. New work in Valdecañada and Viariz gave him access to higher elevations, poorer soils, and slower ripening cycles. At 700 meters and above, slate and schist replace the clays of Valtuille. In Valdecañada, some wines age under flor, developing subtle oxidative tones without sacrificing clarity. In Viariz, which rises past 1000 meters, the top parcel called La Muria has emerged as a structured, slow-moving interpretation of high-altitude Mencía. These wines are not outliers. They are counterpoints that test how far the region’s materials can stretch.
Collaboration has served a similar purpose. In Ribeira Sacra, Pérez works with Rodrigo Méndez on Castro Candaz, a project that applies the Bierzo frame to the cooler, granite-soiled slopes of Chantada. In Bierzo, Encinas, created with Antoine Graillot, reintroduces concrete vats and full clusters into a region where those tools had largely disappeared. In the Douro, he has worked with Dirk Niepoort under the Ultreia name. In South Africa, he created Cabo de las Tormentas with Eben Sadie. These projects do not dilute the house style. They test its limits, refining the logic behind the choices made at home.
Back at Castro Ventosa, the portfolio remains anchored in old vines and gradual shifts. In strong vintages, production approaches 300,000 bottles. Most of that is young Mencía, vinified to preserve fruit, freshness, and herbal lift. Higher tiers, including Vino de Villa and paraje wines from sites like Villegas and Rapolao, provide finer resolution. César Márquez now oversees the full range. His own independent label has added depth to the regional conversation, while his work at Castro Ventosa continues to mirror the structural discipline he learned from his uncle.
Saint Jacques itself has undergone deliberate refinements. After the 2018 vintage, Pérez removed the small proportion of white grapes that had traditionally cofermented with the Mencía. In 2020, he increased the percentage of stem inclusion, which sharpened aromatic lift and gave the midpalate more definition. The 2021 vintage, composed of eleven base wines selected from a pool of seventeen, leaned more heavily on sandy soils and finished at 13.16 percent alcohol with a pH of 3.66. These details matter. They reflect how precision and scale are held in tension rather than opposition, and how small decisions, repeated at the right moment, protect the shape of a wine as its reach grows.
What ties the winery’s work together is not a fixed style but a structure of thinking. La Vizcaína clarifies the logic of terroir by treating each paraje as a lens. The high-elevation projects test Mencía’s adaptability to stress, temperature, and exposure. The single-parcel Ultreia wines demonstrate the range of nuance that old vines can hold. The family estate continues to serve as both foundation and proving ground. Saint Jacques, in this context, functions not as an entry-level wine but as the opening argument. It offers a distilled version of the region’s character without generalization, and introduces the method by which place becomes legible.
The point is not to diversify for its own sake. It is to use each wine as a way of understanding Bierzo more precisely. Raúl Pérez has made that process the core of his practice. He has built a winery that moves slowly, speaks clearly, and lets the vineyard decide what tone to take. That clarity is why the wines endure, and why the work continues to shape how the region sees itself.