Bodegas y Vinedos Raul Perez Ultreia Saint Jacques

Raul Perez was born into a winemaking family, Bodegas Castro Ventosa, the largest owner of Mencia plantings in Bierzo. Raul grew up developing his ideals and worked at the family winery until 2003. His reluctance to compromise has made him both controversial and popular. Bodegas Raul Perez produces extra limited, handcrafted, artisanal wines from varieties such as Albarino, Mencia, Bastardo and Godello from northwestern Spain.

'The biggest volume of the winery is the 2021 Ultreia Saint Jacques, which represents some 170,000 bottles, and according to Raúl Pérez, it's the most difficult wine to make here. They now work a lot to produce this wine, a blend of 11 wines selected from the 17 they made. It's a wine that represents Bierzo and is from a year when they used more grapes from sandy soils. It has 13.16% alcohol and a pH of 3.66; it's serious and restrained but juicy and easy to drink. Seventy percent of the wine matured in barrel and the rest in troncoconic oak vats.' - 93 points - Robert Parker's Wine Advocate