Wine Epiphany Number One on My Recent Trip to Spain: Bodegas Pérez Pascuas Viña Pedrosa in Pedrosa de Duero

 

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Gerry Dawes and Manolo Pérez Pascuas, one of the brothers who own the Viña Pedrosa winery and vineyards during a visit in 2016.

I had two wine epiphanies on my seven-week trip to Spain.  The first was at Bodegas Pérez Pascuas Viña Pedrosa in Pedrosa de Duero in the Burgos Province uplands of the Ribera del Duero.  In my opinion, this winery, which I have been visiting for more that 40 years is now likely the greatest winery in the region.  For years I have been close friends with the family, especially Manolo Pérez Pascuas, one of the brothers who own the winery and vineyards.  And for decades, I have complained to Manolo about the oak in the Viña Pedrosa, oak that I felt had obscured the greatness of the family’s vineyards, which are some of the best in Spain.  Then I found out that they had had a major falling out six years ago with their winemaker José Manuel Pérez Oveja, son of the older brother Benjamín, who was named Spain’s Viticulturist of the Year in the 1990s.  

I have known José Manuel Pérez Oveja since I begin visiting the bodega (founded in 1980) in 1984.  He began making the wines in 1989 and a few years later I began to notice the marked influence of new oak on the wines.  In those days, the winery made a Vino Joven, an unoaked young Ribera de Duero Tinto Fino wine that was delicious and after I had tasted all their current release and we were having dinner, usually chuletillas al sarmiento, baby lamb chops cooked over grapevine cuttings, I would ask to return to their lovely un-oaked wine to finish the meal. 

Over the years, I tasted at Pérez Pascaus more than a score of times and noted how much the new oak had masked the character of what may be the greatest vineyards in the Ribera del Duero.  One day, I was with José Manuel Pérez Oveja, with whom I had a good relationship, in the bodega amongst rows of new oak barrels, which is all I could smell.  We were tasting a wine together and he told, “See, you can’t smell the new oak in this wine.” 

That is all I could smell and I suddenly realized that he (and others who crucify wines on the Parkerista new oak crosses) work in these sawmill redolent parques de barricas (stands of new oak barrels) and have been inoculated against the smell of new oak, a flavor that in my humble opinion after more that 50 years of tasting wines as a wine writer and wine professional, is the grossest adulteration of the flavors of wine I have ever encountered during my career in the wine world (at least Greek retsina announces what it really is). 

On April 25, I brought six people--my former Food Arts Editor Jim Poris and his wife Betsy, Ken Emerson and Ellen O'Meara and Andrew Poulos and my soul mate Kay Balun--along with me to visit my old friend Manolo at Bodegas Pérez Pascuas Viña Pedrosa in Pedrosa de Duero to visit the winery, taste the latest releases and have lunch, spears of espárragos blancos de Navarra in Spanish extra virgen olive oil, ensalada de lechuga, tomate y cebolla,  great chorizos cookedin Pedrosa vino tinto, morcilla de Burgos and those wonderful chuletillas al sarmiento.  

 

 

 

 

As we began the meal, Manolo served us Bodegas Pérez Pascuas Viña Pedrosa Crianza 2022 and I found that I was drinking it faster than usual, despite its 14.5% alcohol, which is at least a degree too elevated for my liking.  He followed with Viña Pedrosa Reserva 2019 and Gran Reserva 2018, both of which, I suddenly began to realize had followed the same pattern as the Crianza, showing all the fruit from the great Viña Pedrosa and none of the oak domination. 

 

 As we began the meal, Manolo served us Bodegas Pérez Pascuas Viña Pedrosa Crianza 2022. Photo by Kay Balun.

As the last wine, Manolo Pérez Pascuas, treated us to winery’s flagship wine, their super Ribera del Duero Pérez Pascuas 2016, which of the wines we drank today, as it turns out was the only one made while José Manuel Pérez Oveja was still making the wines.  This wine sells on some wine lists for up to €300!  Unlike the previous  three wine, there it was, harsh new oak obscuring the finish of what should have been a great, great wine.

It was a very clear, very stark demarcation and an epiphany for this taster who had tasted and drunk Pérez Pascuas from their first vintage in 1980.  I commented to Manolo about the marked difference in the wines and he nodded his agreement to what I was detecting. 

Manolo Pérez Pascuas, Viña Pedrosa head enologist Nuria Peña Albillo and Gerry Dawes during a visit to the winery in 2023.

The difference a winemaker can make—the new enologist is a woman, Nuria Peña Albillo—was marked and remarkable.  As was the appearance of Dani Pérez Herrero, Manolo’s partner-brother Adolfo’s son and vineyard manager and developer.  This was my second encounter with Dani in my last two visits.  It was exciting to see him again and hear what is doing with Pérez Pascuas’s outstanding, high elevation vineyards:  He is re-converting all the vineyards that were trained on wires back to goblet-pruned vines, he has stopped any drip irrigation of vines and he is turning herds of sheep loose in the vineyards, which accomplishes two things, the control of grasses and weeds among the wines and from the sheep droppings provides natural fertilizer.  The sheep hooves even churn the soil. 

 Dani Pérez Herrero, Manolo’s partner-brother Adolfo’s son and vineyard manager and developer.

If Dios wills it, I hope to taste these wines a few years from now, when my bet is that they will be among the top five red wine wineries in Spain.   Their vineyards are certainly good enough.

Vineyards at Pérez Pascuas, Pedrosa de Duero.

 Gerry Dawes, author of Sunset in a Glass:  Adventures of a Food and Wine Road Warrior in Spain Volume I (Available on Amazon; Volume II coming in the fall of 2025.)  

The SECOND EDITION of Sunset in a Glass: Adventures of a Food and Wine Road Warrior Enhanced Photography Edition Volume I (of IV) has some new photographs and text, The book is a collection of non-fiction stories about the adventures of recognized Spanish food, wine and travel authority Gerry Dawes, recipient of the prestigious Spanish National Gastronomy Prize.  Sunset in a Glass is illustrated with more than 160 color and black-and-white photographs chronicling adventures from decades of living and traveling in Spain. The Foreword by star Chef José Andrés. The First Edition has 50 Five-star reviews on Amazon..

The stories in Sunset in a Glass are distilled from decades of crisscrossing Spain accumulating adventures with the likes of José Andrés, Anthony Bourdain, James Earl Jones, Kenneth Tynan, Keith Hernandez, Thomas Keller, Ferran Adria, top chefs and restaurateurs, star winemakers and artisan wine producers, professional Ibérico ham carvers, bullfighters, flamenco artists, friends of Ernest Hemingway and a wonderful collection of women in Spain.

“Gerry Dawes, the unbridled Spanish food and wine enthusiast cum expert whose writing, photography, and countless crisscrossings of the peninsula have done the most to introduce Americans—and especially American food professionals—to my country’s culinary life. He has connected with all manner of people working at every level and in every corner of Spain. You can step into a restaurant in the smallest town in Spain, and it turns out they know Gerry somehow.”—José Andrés, chef-restaurateur-humanitarian, Nobel Prize nominee.

 

President  Bill Clinton and Kay Balun with Sunset in a Glass at Ibiza Kitchen, Chappaqua, NY.

 Comments are welcome and encouraged.

Text and photographs copyright by Gerry Dawes©2025.  Using photographs without crediting Gerry Dawes©2025 on Facebook.  Publication without my written permission is not authorized.

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  Shall deeds of Caesar or Napoleon ring
More true than Don Quixote's vapouring?
Hath winged Pegasus more nobly trod
Than Rocinante stumbling up to God?

 

Poem by Archer M. Huntington inscribed under the Don Quixote on his horse Rocinante bas-relief sculpture by his wife, Anna Vaughn Hyatt Huntington,

in the courtyard of the Hispanic Society of America’s incredible museum at 613 W. 155th Street, New York City.

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36. Gerry Dawes's Spain: An Insider's Guide to Spanish Food, Wine, Culture and Travel

 
About Gerry Dawes

My good friend Gerry Dawes, the unbridled Spanish food and wine enthusiast cum expert whose writing, photography, and countless crisscrossings of the peninsula have done the most to introduce Americans—and especially American food professionals—to my country's culinary life." -- Chef-restaurateur-humanitarian José Andrés, Nobel Peace Prize Nominee and Oscar Presenter 2019

Gerry Dawes is the Producer and Program Host of Gerry Dawes & Friends, a weekly radio progam on Pawling Public Radio in Pawling, New York (streaming live and archived at www.pawlingpublicradio.org and at www.beatofthevalley.com.)

Dawes was awarded Spain's prestigious Premio Nacional de Gastronomía (National Gastronomy Award) in 2003. He writes and speaks frequently on Spanish wine and gastronomy and leads gastronomy, wine and cultural tours to Spain. He was a finalist for the 2001 James Beard Foundation's Journalism Award for Best Magazine Writing on Wine, won The Cava Institute's First Prize for Journalism for his article on cava in 2004, was awarded the CineGourLand “Cinéfilos y Gourmets” (Cinephiles & Gourmets) prize in 2009 in Getxo (Vizcaya) and received the 2009 Association of Food Journalists Second Prize for Best Food Feature in a Magazine for his Food Arts article, a retrospective piece about Catalan star chef, Ferran Adrià. 

In December, 2009, Dawes was awarded the Food Arts Silver Spoon Award in a profile written by José Andrés. 

". . .That we were the first to introduce American readers to Ferran Adrià in 1997 and have ever since continued to bring you a blow-by-blow narrative of Spain's riveting ferment is chiefly due to our Spanish correspondent, Gerry "Mr. Spain" Dawes, the messianic wine and food journalist raised in Southern Illinois and possessor of a self-accumulated doctorate in the Spanish table. Gerry once again brings us up to the very minute. . ." - - Michael & Ariane Batterberry, Editor-in-Chief/Publisher and Founding Editor/Publisher, Food Arts, October 2009. 

 

Pilot for a reality television series on wine, gastronomy, culture and travel in Spain.
 

Experience Spain With Gerry Dawes: Customized Culinary, Wine & Cultural Trips to Spain & Travel Consulting on Spain  

Gerry Dawes can be reached at gerrydawes@aol.com; Alternate e-mail (use only if your e-mail to AOL is rejected): gerrydawes@gmail.com