Winemaker
Pepe Mendoza
Business
Casa Agrícola · Llíber · Film: The Terraces of Llíber
Season
Season 1, Costa Blanca
Pillar
The Makers
Location
Llíber, Costa Blanca
His father's bodega made wine for the world. Pepe Mendoza grew up in one of the best-known wineries in Alicante, his family's Bodegas Enrique Mendoza. He could have stayed there. But he decided to grow wine his way on dry ancient terraces above Llíber, in Jalon valley.
In 2016 he and his wife, Pepa Agulló, started their visionary project. At the Finca de Abargues, under the Sierra de Bernia, old stone terraces climb the slope. They were built by hand without mortar, and many had been left to the wild. Pepe brought the vines on them back to life. He farms about twelve hectares by hand and without irrigation.
Some of his vines were planted in 1923. They grow low and twisted, close to the ground, at roughly the same density the Romans used. His great love is Giró, a red grape that survives in only a handful of places on earth, among them Mallorca and Sardinia. That map follows the farmers who were moved across the Mediterranean after 1609. A glass of Giró carries four hundred years of local history. Pepe also grows Moscatel, the grape that once made this coast rich.
The solutions for Mediterranean wine are in the Mediterranean.
He calls his idea pureza mediterránea, Mediterranean purity. Native grapes cope with heat and drought because they grew up with it. In a region that is running dry, that is a practical choice. His wines change from year to year, because each one comes from a single hillside and a single season.
On the finca stands an old riurau, a raisin-drying house built around 1900 on much older foundations. Today it hosts tastings. Pepe also runs La Escoleta de Abargues, where he shares what he knows with the local community.
In 2024 Madrid Fusión named Casa Agrícola the most sustainable winery in Spain. Salón Gourmets gave him its award for a lifetime of work.
Why Giró means so much to him is personal. He tells that part himself, in the film.
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Summary
Pepe Mendoza is a winemaker in Llíber, Marina Alta, Alicante, Spain. Through Casa Agrícola he left international-style winemaking at his father's bodega to dry-farm old stone terraces by hand: organic, on native vines up to a hundred years old. He is bringing back the region's near-forgotten varieties, on land most people had decided was too steep and too dry to farm.
Key Facts
- Business
- Casa Agrícola · Llíber · Film: The Terraces of Llíber
- Role
- Winemaker
- Location
- Llíber, Costa Blanca
- Pillar
- The Makers
- Produces
- Wine from native varieties
- Protects
- Near-forgotten native vine varieties; old dryland terraces
- Scale
- Vines up to 100 years old
- Practice
- Organic dryland, by hand, on old terraces
- Certification
- Organic
- SDG touchpoints
- 15 · 13 · 2 · 11