Alejandro Fernández’s Pesquera is, of course, one of the legendary Estates of Spain. It was under this label that Alejandro Fernández made the 100% Tempranillo wines that first launched the Ribera del Duero region onto the world stage. He established Pesquera in 1972 and the resulting critical acclaim was instrumental in the Ribera de Duero receiving official D.O. status in 1982. Pesquera also rose to international fame after Robert Parker described the 1982 Tinto Pesquera as “the Spanish Château Petrus”. Perceptions of the region changed forever. One of Spain’s true wine pioneers, Alejandro Fernández passed away in May 2021 at the age of 88.

Having proven that you didn’t need to be Vega Sicilia to produce world-class wine in Ribera, in the mid-1980s, Fernandez established a second property on the steep banks of the Duero between Roa and La Horra. Abandoned for years, the slope had consisted of hundreds of small parcels with separate and stubborn ownership. Following three years of persuasive consolidation, Condado de Haza christened its first vintage in 1988.

These are wines of timeless popularity built around a fulcrum of ripe and silky fruit, classical tannins and the freshness of the continental climes where Fernández worked until his very last years.

Unstoppable, in 1998 Fernandez purchased a ranch in Zamora (which also produces olive oil, cheese and chickpeas). Dehesa la Granja is sited at an altitude above the Guareña River, just outside the boundaries of the Toro region.

Alejandro’s approach was always to emphasize the extraordinary fruit intensity gifted by his high-altitude, limestone-rich vineyards. The wines are made almost entirely from bush vine Tinta del Pais, the local name given to Ribera’s own thick-skinned, wilder mutation of Tempranillo. Over the years, the practices have remained staunchly traditional: hand harvests; foot-treading; and maturation for years in an astute blend of French, Spanish and American oak barrels. All the wines are well cellared before release.

The wines of Alejandro Fernández remain some of the very finest of their genre, part of a select group of deliciously enduring, thought-provoking Spanish wines that have one foot firmly planted in the old school and the other in modern Europe.

There is a hands-off, long-aging complexity to these wines that confidently points to the past rather than the current zeitgeist where everything is bright and jubey. The Spanish have a lovely, quirky saying—'no hay que buscarle tres pies al gato’—which translates as ‘don’t search for three legs on a cat’, or, in Australian vernacular, ‘if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it’.