Raul Perez, La Vizcaina - La del Vivo, Bierzo 2020

Produced from two plots, one in La Poulosa planted in 1936 and one in the village of Cacabelos, new in 2020. 95% Godello and 5% Dona Blanca.

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.