The story of Bodegas Enguera is the story of a dreamer. It’s the story of someone who changed its luck, someone who left a great legacy, always true to their roots. It’s the story of D. Pedro Pérez Pardo.
D. Pedro was born on June 15, 1921 in Cortes de Pallás, a small mountain town of less than 1,000 inhabitants in the interior of the province of Valencia. From a humble and peasant family, he always had a special bond with agriculture and the rural world. He suffered the consequences of the harsh post-war that the country would go through in subsequent years. Without a doubt an event that would mark his life forever.
He never studied for a university degree but he always had great concerns and cultivated the most valuable of qualities: the ability to work with people. D. Pedro developed a multitude of businesses, the distribution of butane being one of his greatest successes. In 1960 he managed the distribution of butane throughout the Mediterranean region. Despite this and other achievements, his greatest dream had always been to create a winery to make great wines from his own vineyards.
1974
The beginnings
In 1974, Pedro bought the Antolí and El Chalet del Río estates in Enguera, where he planted numerous orchard crops, citrus fruits, olive groves, fruit trees and vineyards. He also acquired the Casa Lluch and Casa Corones estates, in Fontanars dels Alforins, with 65 hectares of vineyards, and then began to produce wine in the old Casa Corones winery, which was mostly marketed in bulk.
In 1999 he fulfilled his great dream and built a winery in Enguera. A family winery dedicated to producing high-quality bottled wines that meticulously represent the characteristics of the soil and climate of Fontanars dels Alforins.
1999
The winery
2002
Second
generation
The quality of the vineyard and the productive approach did not allow for the objective of making great wines to be achieved, so in 2002 the reconversion of the vineyard began. Around that time, the Casa Toñuna farm was also acquired, a 20-hectare farm with great potential in the Sierra de Enguera. In that same year, D. Juan Iglesias Jiménez, son-in-law of D. Pedro, and his wife, Ms. María Cruz Pérez Herrero, started the second generation of the winery and managed, with their enthusiasm and passion, to position Bodegas Enguera among the great Valencian wineries. Hand in hand with D. Juan, Diego Fernández Pons, our winemaker, and José Vicente Gómez Carbajal, agronomist and technical director of the winery, are in charge of proposing the new viticulture and oenology model that, maintaining tradition, would make the success of the company possible. One of the hallmarks of this new model would be organic farming. Even then we knew that only by taking care of nature would we be able to obtain great wines from it. It should be the winery who had to guide the fruit until it became wine, without carrying out major interventions along the way.
In November 2011, all the plots are certified organic, while work continues to make viticulture more sustainable and respectful towards the environment. That year Mr. Pedro Pérez Pardo passed away at the age of 90, having seen his great dream come true. D. Pedro was also able to see how his grandchildren Juan Ramón Iglesias Pérez, Pedro Iglesias Pérez and Silver Segarra Pérez, already formed the third generation of the winery.
2011
Working towards a more
sustainable viticulture
2013
Consolidating the reconversion
of the vineyard
Consolidating the conversion process of the vineyard, in 2013, Juan Ramón becomes the manager of Bodegas Enguera and actively participates in the design and marketing of the winery’s wines, which are gaining in quality and international recognition. On the other hand, Pedro dedicates all his efforts to boosting wine tourism and sharing his passion for wine with consumers and clients at national and international fairs. Silver, lastly, closely follows the work of his younger brothers, but decides to dedicate himself to another of his great passions, which is medicine.
Both Pedro and Juan Ramón were aware that the company should contribute to improving society and caring for the environment. Thus, in 2014, they created Enguera Planet, a research center aimed at mitigating the effect of climate change by establishing organic farming techniques that promote biological control of pests, the reduction of the carbon footprint or the reduction of the consumption of water, among other things. They give this task to Juan Martínez Barberá, a young winemaker who is passionate about organic viticulture. He goes on to establish relationships with universities and other research centers so as to launch the organic farming projects that we currently develop.
2014
Enguera Planet
is created
2020
Aliats is born
As a result of one of these projects, the Aliats wines range was born. These are the first wines of the third generation of Bodegas Enguera, wines that represent the alliance between nature and man, and juggle two of the great passions of the third gen brothers: comics and ecology.
