Alejandro Perfecto’s family has never owned a winery, but they’ve been growing vines for generations in Alfaro and Aldeanueva de Ebro, at the eastern edge of Rioja. It’s a cooperative-dominated area traditionally associated with high-volume production, although Alejandro insists this isn’t due to a lack of vineyard potential. He says that large quantities of grapes were historically sold to wineries elsewhere in Rioja, and bottling only really began to take off around 25 years ago.

Despite being a warm region, Alejandro believes it’s possible to preserve freshness in the grapes with careful vineyard management and a well-timed harvest. Convinced of the quality of some of the older family plots, he left his job at a company selling oenological products after persuading his wife to invest their savings into Temerario. Launched with the 2023 vintage, this wine project focuses on the family’s oldest and lowest-yielding vineyards, farmed without herbicides and using organic fertilisers. He farms the vines with help from his father and brother, and vinifies his wines at Bárbara Palacios’s, who offered him space in her winery in Briones, conveniently close to his home in Haro, allowing him to keep a close eye on the wines.

To test the waters and avoid overcommitting, he started with a direct-press rosé made from around 2,500 kg of Garnacha planted in 1960 in a 1.5-hectare plot in a site called Lobera in Alfaro. For the 2024 vintage (2,289 bottles, €15), he co-fermented 15% Mazuelo with Garnacha to achieve a fresher, more gastronomic style with enough structure to age well in bottle. It’s vinified entirely in stainless steel, with four to five months of lees ageing.

In 2024, he released three other wines from the 2023 vintage. Temerario Blanco (1,273 bottles, €19) comes from La Montesa (no relation to the Álvaro Palacios wine), an area with well-drained limestone soils. At 380 metres elevation, the Cierzo wind regularly blows through, keeping the 1977-planted, dry-farmed Viura vines healthy. Yields range from 7,000 to 8,000 kg/ha, with potential to increase over time. Like the rosé, it ferments in stainless steel, but is then transferred to 500-litre oak casks where it rests on its lees for nine months. The wine shows notes of white fruit and fresh herbs, with a juicy, appealing palate and well-integrated oak.

Temerario Garnacha (2,285 bottles, €19) is made from two small plots —Lobera and Valcaliente, the latter planted in 1988 in Aldeanueva— totalling around 0.7 hectares. Each vineyard is vinified separately and aged for eight months in used 500-litre casks to preserve Garnacha’s floral and fruity aromatics through a gentle maturation process.

Temerario Mazuela (1.273 bottles, 22,50 €) comes from a 3.5-hectare vineyard planted in 1984 in Esparragal, a site in Alfaro. The aim here is gentle extraction to retain the variety’s aromatic character —violets and red fruit— complementing the wine’s light rusticity, freshness, and depth. It spends 11 months in 500-litre oak casks. This is an impressive debut for a grape that shows excellent pH and acidity and is well-suited to climate change.

Of the 15 hectares of family vines still supplying the local cooperative, Alejandro and his brother have begun uprooting Tempranillo and some Garnacha planted from 1990 onwards —varieties suited to volume but not aligned with the ethos of Temerario. In 2025, they’ve already planted 1.5 hectares of Maturana Blanca and plan to expand further in the near future.

Alongside Temerario, Alejandro also works as a consultant for Fernández Eguiluz, a small family-run winery in Ábalos.