About Me
My relationship with wine did not begin in a winery. It began in an environment where everything was measured, checked and repeated until you understood why each thing happened.
After finishing my degree in Chemistry I joined L’Oréal, in the R&D department. They were almost three highly formative years, in which I built a foundation that still defines the way I work today: method, process control and absolute respect for detail. There I learned how a production process is designed, how a variable is controlled and how technical decisions are made when there is no margin for error. Industry does not allow for unsupported intuition: everything must have a reason.
At the same time, outside working hours, I started going out into the vineyard. At a small winery in Aranda de Duero I began collaborating by setting up a laboratory and developing vineyard studies. At first the work was simple —observation, sampling, basic trials— but for me it was a discovery. For the first time I could see how a decision in the vineyard had a direct, measurable and real effect on the wine. Wine stopped being a romantic idea and became a living system, complex and fascinating. That was decisive: I took a leave of absence and specialised in Oenology. From then on, there was no turning back.
Numanthia was my first great winery and a defining school. I arrived at an extreme project, with old vines, low yields and very high technical demands, but also with a clear idea of where it wanted to go. There I understood that the character of a wine is not at odds with technology when technology is used with a precise purpose. Processes that were innovative at the time —such as berry-by-berry destemming— were not a fashion, but the only way to achieve an extreme selection and a definition of the wine that was impossible to reach otherwise. That stage taught me that technology is not the end but the tool, and that innovating only makes sense when it serves a clear idea of wine.
After Toro came Ribera del Duero, where I took on management from a technical standpoint. It was no longer only about making wine, but about running a complete structure: production, processes, vineyard, bulk wine and decisions with a direct economic impact. Technical work stopped being a department and became the backbone of the winery. Rauda was a cooperative with a long history and strong inertia, which demanded ordering, measuring and controlling with rigour. Over time the processes stabilised and the wines gained coherence. Rauda taught me that running a winery is not about imposing a vision, but about bringing order to a complex reality and making it work through technical knowledge.
Tobelos spanned thirteen years of my career, and that completely changes the way you work. It was not about isolated decisions, but about building an identity. At a time when many wineries were focusing on signature or single-vineyard wines, we understood that the real space for differentiation lay in the crianza, conceived not as a generic category but as a wine with a design of its own, coherent and recognisable. That amounted to a small revolution in Rioja and turned the crianza into a benchmark wine for its consistency and personality. Tobelos taught me that creating a solid wine is not about getting it right once, but about knowing how to repeat that success without losing its meaning.
During those years, and thanks to an agreement with Tobelos, I began working harvests in the southern hemisphere: Chile, Argentina, New Zealand and South Africa. At first I did it out of technical curiosity; later, out of personal need. I did not want to be told how things were done, I needed to live it: to work in the vineyard, make decisions and compare realities. It was a demanding stage, but a profoundly transformative one. Those trips confirmed my interest in micro-vinifications and in white wine, a territory still full of possibilities in Rioja.
Moving to Bodegas Franco Españolas meant taking on a century-old winery at a decisive moment. Its technical foundations had to be rebuilt to guarantee its continuity, reviewing processes, engineering and equipment, and reinterpreting the classic wines with a contemporary outlook. It was a stage of enormous learning that forced me to understand wine from a historical, technical and business perspective at the same time. I understood that respecting a winery with history is not about repeating the past, but about giving it the tools to keep building its future.
Then came Pagos del Rey, where I took on the technical and general management of the group’s wineries in Rioja, Ribera del Duero, Rueda and Toro. A large-scale project that became one of the greatest challenges of coordination and technical management of my career. That stage closed the circle: it let me confirm how far I could go within complex structures and, at the same time, identify clearly what I really wanted to preserve.
Today I work as an independent consultant, collaborating with wineries that look for technical rigour, oenological judgement and an integral vision of wine. This work sits alongside my personal project, La Cueva del Castillo, where I apply everything I have learned to a way of understanding wine on a human scale.
