Exclusive: Justerini & Brooks joins forces with Raúl Pérez

By Jo Gilbert

Published: 27 January, 2023

Wine Merchant Justerini & Brooks has unveiled its first-ever collaborative wine – a partnership between buyer Mark Dearing and icon of Spanish winemaking, producer Raúl Pérez.

Harpers can exclusively reveal the collaboration: a regional blend made from some of the most ancient and most prestigious plots in Bierzo.

The wine pays tribute to the heritage of both parties, too. The name, Ultreia Saint James’s, riffs off both Pérez’s flagship red wine Ultreia Saint Jacques (named after the pilgrimage of Camino de Santiago, which passes through Bierzo) and London’s St James’s Street, Justerini & Brooks’ spiritual home.

Celebrated for his quest to restore old Bierzo vineyards, Pérez is also known for his collaborative approach to winemaking and consultancy work all over the world.

Just like Pérez, Dearing describes the project as a “complete one-off”.

“We’ve had a couple of own-label wines before, but this is the first time we’ve built something from the ground up; the result is an unusually distinctive wine, made exclusively for the UK. We’ve been working with Raúl for five years, now. We thought it would be nice to leverage his open-mindedness. He has an enormous palate, too. It has been an amazing insight into how someone like him approaches the blending process,” he said.

A limited edition run of 900 bottles, the final wine blends Mencia (80%) and other indigenous grape varieties such as Godello, Trousseau and Alicante.

The base hails from Pérez’s home village of Valtuille de Abajo, with 68% of the blend taken from two plots: Cabanelas, east-facing on clay and sandy soils, planted in 1930; and La Vitoriana, a north-facing at 600m elevation on sandy and stony soils, planted in 1881 on original rootstocks.

The secret ingredient, however, is the schist-rich area of Valdecañada. This historic but lesser-known subregion comprises some of the area’s highest vineyards between 800-1000m.

Though the project has been several years in the making, Dearing describes how the project really came together in September last year with a tasting of small quantities of Valdecañada wine.

“At the end of the initial blending session in September, we tasted wine from barrels that Raúl had de-classified from his high-end Valdecañada project, on schist soils. We decided it would make sense to go in our project. This is wine from really top-end vineyards that would have gone to waste,” he said.

Ultreia St James’s 2020 (rrp £33.68, 75cl) is officially launching on 3 February, with a handful of exclusive partnerships taking place. In England, Hedonism Wines and its Mayfair restaurant off-shoot, Hide, will be listing the wine.

In Scotland, the wine will be available exclusively at the new opening of Duck & Waffle in Edinburgh’s St James’s district, continuing the St James’s theme.

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