He is the seventh of nine children of José Palacios Remondo, a patriarch of Rioja wines. The chosen one. The alchemist who insisted on distilling the mystery of the vineyard — and has achieved it in the lands of Rioja, Bierzo, and Priorat. Álvaro Palacios (Alfaro, 1964), a whirlwind of charm — as he once again demonstrated at Vila Viniteca’s 2024 En Primeur Tasting — has earned the coveted 100 Parker points with wines like La Faraona, L’Ermita, and Quiñón de Valmira.
Q. You're received like a rock star.
A. I'm a humble viticulturist.
Q. A viticulturist with a winery designed by Rafael Moneo.
A. We’re still paying for it! But I’m not building a chicken farm to make wine. You have to give it your all. I wanted a building that respected the natural surroundings — and Moneo is an austere and solemn architect — he also makes wine. The building in Villafranca del Bierzo is underground. A marvel. But I’m happy in any of the three vineyards.
Q. Always?
A. There are days of concern. The other day I got back from Mexico and went straight to the vineyard because there were signs of mildew. Everyone was ready to treat it.
Q. Your brother Manuel passed away in Mexico. In 2021 another sister, Chelo, died.
A. Chelo, Ricardo’s mother — my partner — was a total winemaker. And Manolo, the funniest one, a phenomenon... But my daughter Lola is pregnant. Life will renew itself with my granddaughter.
Q. At this point, are you what you always wanted to be?
A. As a child, I wanted to be a bullfighter, a fine rock singer, and a motorcycle racer (my second eldest brother brought home a Bultaco Sherpa, and we were dazzled). But since my father made all of us work from a young age, I became captivated by the mysteries of the winery — the silence, the humidity, those vats fermenting the malolactic, blup blup, in the dark. I wanted to be really good at whatever I did. And one day I said to myself, “What you know best is wine.”
Q. You started a revolution.
A. I was always very restless, extremely so. I wanted to do things right, to move everything forward, and I turned out to be very patriotic — but not politically. I wanted to defend the land because the rural world had suffered a lot. I studied in Bordeaux, and René Barbier, who had shared an apartment there with my second eldest brother, introduced me to Château Pétrus, the legendary wine of the time, for an internship.
Q. Did you learn many secrets?
A. I learned that Grand Cru existed — that it’s about respecting a piece of land that’s better than another and deserves to be bottled separately. That everything is in the soil, the land, the climate. That great wine is not about blending. In my father’s day, to be someone in Rioja you had to produce 400,000 cases. I didn’t want that.
Q. What did you want?
A. To make a great wine of place. I’ve spent my whole life searching for the land’s mystery, trying to coax it out.
Q. It’s clear you succeed. How do you explain it?
A. I can’t explain it. Beyond harmony, balance, and radiant color — whether it’s Les Terrasses (a blend of grapes from several villages) or single-village wines from Gratallops like Dofí, La Baixada, or L’Ermita — I try to activate every sensory switch in the brain and transport you to the natural world, to the fruit of an unknown paradise, to historical places. One Christmas we drank a La Landonne Côte-Rôtie by Marcel Guigal, and it took me straight to Napoleon’s battles. I stopped the dinner!
Q. Tell us more. What is your canon?
A. Only the greats of the Old World. The old Bordeaux, great Burgundy, the Rhône — southern Châteauneuf-du-Pape, northern Hermitage, Côte-Rôtie Syrah — Barbaresco from Piedmont, some Tuscan wines. Always the traditional ones, because modernism leads nowhere.
Q. Innovation, just a little?
A. Here’s the proof: almost all 100-point Parker wines in Spain come from old vines. The vineyard doesn’t work with intensive viticulture, with non-native varieties. That’s lost a lot of consumers, because it hasn’t knocked on the soul’s door to let the mystery in.
Q. How do you deal with the pretentiousness of some critics?
A. It saddens me. Wine is meant to bring people together in communion, to toast to health and the future, to sing and laugh.
Q. Do you sing?
A. At home, we used to sing lots of coplas, some Argentine tangos, rancheras, and corridos. Now no one sings anymore. We want to dominate others through knowledge. And I say, “Drink good wine and sing, man.”
Q. Perhaps AI will eventually kill wine too.
A. Wine will be what ties us to the past. It demands raw intuition, constant presence in the field, day by day. And then there’s the alchemy — no one knows where it comes from. You can use all the robots you want, and it still won’t work.