Although unknown to many wine aficionados, Arsenio Paz was one of the driving forces behind the recovery of indigenous grape varieties in Ribeiro (Galicia). He also encouraged friends like Javier Alén (Viña Meín) to follow in his footsteps.
Together with his wife Chon Labrador, in the late 1970s Paz purchased a country house in a beautiful property in Gomariz, one of Ribeiro’s most renowned slopes in the Avia Valley. From the start, his goal was to plant it with Galicia’s traditional grape varieties, many of which were on the verge of extinction. In the early 1980s he and his neighbour Ricardo Carreño (Coto de Gomariz) jointly bottled a white wine; then in 1987 Arsenio bottled two wines called Vilerma -a red and a white- sourced from his seven hectares of vines.
Vilerma has remained true to the style of its beginnings: wines that reflect the vineyard and the circumstances of every new vintage. The winery is adjacent to the house that Arsenio and Chon restored and decorated with exquisite taste.
It is best to let the wines rest in bottle for a couple of years to get softer tannins in the red and a marked minerality in the white.
The acquisition of the winery by Bodegas José Pariente, a great white wine specialist, albeit from Rueda, at the beginning of 2024, has provided Vilerma with much-needed continuity.
