Spain
A 6-year-old boy named Nemesio Fernández squeezed through the narrow mouth of the wooden vat in the house, where only one child could enter, to help his grandmother clean the barrel while they both sang together, as they used to do.
That day, Nemesio noticed that his voice was powerful with the echo produced inside the ear; he felt older and he liked that.
From that moment Nemesio began to dream of owning a winery, and thanks to the values of effort and hard work instilled in him by his grandmother, years later he would make his dream a reality.
After working as a driver and owning businesses such as slate quarries, mine excavations, road construction, etc., Nemesio decides to leave everything behind to dedicate himself to what he really loves most: the countryside, first to fruit production and later to vineyards.
In 1989, at the age of 55, he was able to begin fulfilling his dream. It was then that he started buying vineyards in Valtuille de Arriba, in the highest areas of El Bierzo, where the fog did not reach.
He spent Saturdays and Sundays looking for the best vineyard plots, the best oriented ones, which were located in high areas and were less productive, which in those years were the first to be abandoned.
This is how Nemesio came to know almost all the families who had vineyards in the Valtuille de Arriba mountain and the surrounding villages.
He bought some of the less productive vineyards from almost all of them, and in turn, those that yielded the highest quality grapes.
On the other hand, while most winegrowers were replanting the old vineyard with new Mencía vineyards and without the Palomino variety with European subsidies, Nemesio had another vision, and wanted to maintain the root and the old vineyard by regrafting the Palomino vines with old Mencía scions, the native grape of Bierzo.
In this way, Nemesio became one of the first people who believed in and committed to promoting the wines of Bierzo and turning this fantastic wine region into the Spanish Burgundy.
That same year, 1989, the Bierzo Designation of Origin was created, although it would still take about 10 years for some renowned winegrowers and winemakers to start noticing Bierzo and for the region's ability to produce good wines to be recognized.
In recent years the family project has become established and Casar de Burbia has positioned itself among the best wines of Bierzo.
With his extensive experience and knowledge of viticulture, Isidro Fernández continues to promote the creation of elegant, fresh wines that reflect the authentic Bierzo.
To achieve this, Casar de Burbia seeks to do what no one else does, innovating to go further, defending the great potential of Bierzo to make high-level wines.
Their firm commitment to organic vineyard cultivation, research with native grape varieties, and the creation of single-vineyard wines from their own vineyards, give consistency and uniqueness to their project and their wines.
At the same time, Casar de Burbia remains true to tradition, recovering cultivation techniques and production processes to make wines the way they were made before.
