Raul Perez

First rising to prominence as the winemaker at his family estate Castro Ventosa, Raul Perez branched out on his own in 2004 and now maintains a dizzying array of projects in Bierzo and further afield in Rias Baixas, Ribeira Sacra, and the Douro with Dirk Niepoort. 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.

La Vizcaina cellars is 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.