Castro Ventosa
Valtuille Cepas Centenarias
Bierzo
2019

The producer

Castro Ventosa is a family founded and owned wine estate, in the hands of the Perez family since 1752. Today the family owns 72 hectares of Mencia vineyards and are thus the biggest landowner of this grape variety within Bierzo DO. Current generation is the Spanish winemaking legend Raul Perez, who along with being involved with the family vineyard also runs his own company, Bodegas y Vinedos Raul Peres.

The winery – the name of which translates ‘the windy castle’ – is situated in the village of Valtuille de Abajo. The flagship wine Valtuille is made from five parcels of pre-phylloxera vines which grow on the only sandy soil found in Bierzo. Two excellent wines are produced, a red (Mencia) and a white (Godello).

The wine

Valtuille Cepas Centenarias is sourced from a single plot of centenarian vines which is co-planted with many different grape varieties. Valtuille consists of 85% Mencia with the remainder a blend of local indigenous varieties. Wild yeast fermented with a long post-maceration, Valtuille is left to mature for 1 year in 225- and 500-l French oak barrels. This is a pure and vibrant wine with ripe yet crisp blueberry and blackberry fruit, herbal, fresh acidity, and silky texture. Robert Parker has awarded Valtuille very good scores over the years. Just 3500 bottles are produced each year.

We choose our wines based on a range of criteria (see how we choose our wines) of which critic scores is just one. Rather than simply highlight the best score to promote a wine, our average critic score is calculated from the scores provided by several respected wine critics, who we follow for specific regions. They do not represent all critic scores and, wherever possible, we try and give more weight to more recent reviews. Where appropriate we consider market-based scores like Global Wine Score or Wine Searcher Average scores.

As a rule, we look to offer wines that achieve a 92/100 average critic score or better and frankly a lot of very good wines simply don’t make the cut. As a high-end provider we want to reflect that positioning in the quality of wines we offer. Such wines are only a tiny fraction of those generally on offer in the market. We believe that an average score is a more conservative and representative approach, but it is still subjective and only offered as a guide to our customers, who will (and should) do their own research. We will add individual critic scores to our website in the future.