The Pérez Cuevas family is widely known for founding Bodegas Ontañón in 1985 and for a 30-year alliance with Mercadona that has seen them grow alongside Spain's current supermarket leader. Their long-standing wine growing tradition is deeply rooted in Quel, a village on the banks of the Cidacos river in Rioja Oriental, with vineyards stretching to the foothills of the Sierra de Yerga. No wonder Quel was the chosen site for Bodegas Queirón. This ambitious project, launched in 2020, is deeply rooted in the area's landscape and winemaking tradition.
The family's best vineyards in Quel (they own 300 hectares in Rioja) are adscribed to Queirón. Gabriel Pérez (1947), a draughtsman by trade, worked in Bilbao for a few years, but returned to his hometown in the early 1980s to take over the family wine growing business. During the economic downturn at the end of the 1980s, when many farmers turned to other crops (the orography of Quels allows mushrooms, plums, cherries and vines to be grown in the less fertile areas), he decided to plant vines and started bottling wine.
He also fell in love with the highest areas of Yerga, where they grow grapes up to 800 metres elevation in La Pasada (a site in the transition to the next valley), at the base of Monte Gatún, and further down in sites such as Andoñal, where they grow six hectares of Tempranillo and Mazuelo. This is a cool, well-ventilated area, exposed to the westerly winds. La Pasada, which covers nine hectares, was planted to Tempranillo in 1989 - the family believe that Garnacha cannot fully ripen here. But it thrives in the Bartola area, at 620 metres, where some Garnacha Blanca is also planted, and in other vineyards such as La Perdida or El Poeta. Around 30 hectares, including Graciano and Tempranillo Blanco, are destined for Queirón.
Winemaking is done in Quel's old Barrio de Bodegas, built on the left bank of the Cidacos River, where the sandstone bedrock made it possible to build underground facilities. Queiron works by gravity, as was the norm in the past, but has built a spacious four-storey winery, even if it is only designed to process 150,000 kg of grapes. They use a crane system to rack and return the wines and use wooden vats for malolactic fermentation. R&D has been a key concern from the outset. It has been channelled into a series of ephemeral wines called Ensayos Capitales, which have to date produced a sulphite-free Graciano, a Tempranillo Blanco aged in tinaja, a red Tempranillo with sun-dried grapes, similar in style to Amarone ans a Graciano made from exchanging musts and grape skins with Garnacha and Tempranillo during the fermentation process.
Rubén Pérez Cuevas oversees winemaking at both the Queirón and Ontañón wineries, while his sisters are responsible for management (Raquel), viticulture (Leticia) and human resources (María).
The portfolio includes two flagship wines called Mi Lugar, after a poem penned by the local writer Bretón de los Herreros (1796-1873) and dedicated to Quel. Some of the verses speak about wine. The red Mi Lugar (30,000 bottles, €23) blends Tempranillo with around 10% Garnacha from five plots at 600-700 metres elevation in the Yerga foothills. The white (15,000 bottles, €20) is a Tempranillo Blanco that benefits from the experience of the second Ensayos Capitales, which lends extra substance to this variety through skin contact and ageing in a combination of oak and stoneware amphorae.
At the top of the range is El Arca (less than 1,000 bottles, €55), a deep, evocative red wine under the Viñedo Singular category. Grapes are sourced from a hundred-year-old plot of less than a hectare dominated by Garnacha and located in the northern part of the village on more fertile land, but with low yields due to the old age of the vines. Missing plants are being recovered by layering; a technique locally known as mugrón. Queirón de Gabriel (30,000 bottles, €34) is a far more concentrated Reserva intended to be laid down and named after the father of the current generation in charge. It is made from a blend of Tempranillo from La Pasada and Graciano from El Pozo. The winemaking style include long, generous maceration, 24 months of ageing in new oak and a long bottle ageing period before its release. The next top cuvée will tribute to their mother Mari Luz Cuevas.
