Wine for sale: Rafael Palacios

Rafael Palacios

It is simply impossible to travel around Galicia, the verdant region in the north-west of Spain, without hearing about the Palacios family. Today, the family has owned the Palacios-Remondo estate in eastern Rioja for over five generations. Rafael Palacios is Alvaro Palacios’s youngest brother, the iconic winemaker who left the family winery in the 1980s to produce his own Priorat wines. Rafael completed his oenology studies in Bordeaux before working with some of the greatest winemakers in France and Australia, and returning to the family winery in 1994. Ten years on, he completed an internship in Valdeorras, Galicia, and fell head over heels for the terroir. This led him to acquire one of the oldest Godello vineyards in the Bibei Valley, in Santa Cruz do Bolo, in 2004. Before long, he was cultivating around 12 hectares of vines and he released his first vintage in 2004. Today, the estate spans 21 hectares of vines, the majority of which are Godello with one hectare of Treixadura, all of which are organically cultivated.