Gloria de Castro: "Our entire history has been filled with journeys to discover rare wines."

BarcelonaAfter twenty-five years working as a publicist, Gloria de Castro (Caldes de Montbui, 1974) moved from Madrid to Llubí (Mallorca), where she dedicates herself, in turn, to writing, her family and to Brut, a restaurant founded by her partner, chef Eduardo Martínez. De Castro, who won the Llibreter award in 2022 for The moment before impact, published his second novel in June, The solemn temples (Periscope, 2025).

Is there any basis for the relationship between creativity and alcohol?

— I never write about a drink, but I believe the first draft should be written in a rush, without pausing to think about whether this sentence is right or that one isn't. I write the first draft by hand because I feel I have fewer limits that way. I can understand why some writers feel less prejudiced with a drink under their belt. Or like Patricia Highsmith, who in the morning would smoke a glass that she claimed was orange juice, but it turned out to be 90% vodka.

So you never drink wine when you write?

— I drink tea all day long [laughs]. I really like wine, but to write I have to be very lucid, and drinking prevents me from doing so. I limit wine to the weekends, or when we take home leftover bottles from the restaurant. But never for work.

How was the leap from the world of advertising to the restaurant industry?

— When you work in advertising, you touch on so many topics that it's as if you know everything and nothing. Ultimately, we understand restaurant design through creativity. We want both the decor and the concept of each dish to tell a story. The restaurant also follows a philosophy.

Brut opened in 2017. What kind of cuisine does it serve?

— We serve signature cuisine. The space is very unusual, industrial, because it's in an old warehouse that used to be a carpentry store. There's a concrete bar that seats sixteen people every night, and we serve a tasting menu. The concept is quite radical, somewhat punkish.

Could you give me an example?

— We decided to offer the fish of the day with "plastics." Everything in the "Denunciation Plate" is edible, of course, but we present the fish with a bottle cap and a piece of cellophane. We wanted to raise the question that if we don't take care of the oceans, we'll end up eating plastic.

Do you also want your wines to have a message?

— The wines on our list aren't just "just there." Sometimes it's hard to get people to stop at Rioja and Ribera del Duero. We want each wine to tell a story. We go to the wineries and bodegas to meet the people who make the wine, so they can tell us their story, and so we can tell it ourselves. We try to work with winemakers who take great care of what they do and with small wineries that make very special things.

What do you value in a wine?

— For example, we're currently collaborating closely with Vins Nadal, a winery in Binissalem. They're developing some wonderful biodynamic organic wine projects. One of them, Albaflor de Biniaumara, has a ceramic bottle made by a craftswoman from Pòrtol. They're very special.

Because?

— Behind her project is a reflection on how to have vineyards without depleting natural resources, burning the soil, or damaging the planet. Furthermore, it's a wine made by a woman. The wine world has been monopolized by men for a long time, and I think the work some female winemakers are doing, focusing on sustainability and love for the land, is very important.

The narrator of The moment before impact She is obsessed with the presence of chemicals in food.

— When I worked in advertising, I focused primarily on the food industry, and I know that many brands are profit-driven without considering the health of their consumers. When we opened the restaurant, my husband and I were very clear that we didn't want to support this, and we decided not to have any industrial soft drinks. The same goes for wines. We said to ourselves, "Why don't we find people who look after and care for each plant, instead of buying from large companies that only want profit?"

Are vineyards part of your family history?

— We now have a small project underway to plant vineyards so we can make our wine, which we believe would help us convey our own story. But no: I've always lived in apartments. My grandfather lived in Camarasa and had a vegetable garden and chickens. When I was little, that was my idea of happiness. I always thought, "When I grow up, I want to have this."

And you did it.

— When we came to live in Mallorca and rented a house with a small plot of land behind it, I thought, "This is mine." The garden also helps me in the writing process.

Because?

— When I'm stuck, I pull weeds. Then you get a terrifying backache, but it's super liberating [laughs]. I relate writing a lot to the earth: touching, finding origins, searching for truth. The earth connects you with life, teaches you to distinguish the good from the bad. The life that emerges from beneath the weeds will be stronger. The same thing happens when you write: if you can erase everything that isn't part of the story, the words will gain more power.

Of The moment…: "I say Merlot "To put it mildly. Because it's a word that, when you say it, automatically makes you an interesting person."

— I'm a bit enriched by posturing. I'm a bit critical of people who go to a restaurant and look at the glass, hold it up to the light, analyze the color of the wine, swirl it... Is this theatrics necessary to show that you're a wine connoisseur, or maybe we're taking it a bit too far? For me, it's more important to taste the wine knowing the whole story behind it.

You worked at the same time with The moment… and the new novel, The solemn temples (Periscope, 2025).

— Editing is a delicate task, with a great deal of grammatical, spelling, and literary skill, which causes me some mental stress. While editing The moment before impact I found that I needed to get back to the feeling of writing freely, without anything holding me back. And I started writing. The solemn temples.

They are two very different works. How was the transition from irreverence to solemnity?

— It's true that there are differences, but it all stems from a somewhat angry voice, very critical of society. But working with a text in one style led me to seek a different tone and a different relationship with the narrator and the characters. It also coincided with the time we moved from Madrid to Mallorca, which was a somewhat drastic change.

Because?

— Suddenly moving to a small town in the middle of nowhere, panicking about landing without really knowing what we would do... The solemn temples also speaks of an escape without a parachute.

Have you found yourself more comfortable in one shade than the other?

— Writing from black humor, like The moment…, allows you to write more quickly. The solemn temples It has more rewrites. Being more poetic, there is more linguistic work.

And when it comes to drinking, do you look for lightness or solemnity?

— Every wine has its moment. Biniaumara's Albaflor, for example, is a very special wine, and I might not drink it if I were eating certain things. I had one when I went to see Tita Nadal, the winemaker, and it was wonderful. It's not just the wine. The great thing about wine is also the situation it's in and the people you're drinking it with. Wine always comes with good things.

And what would be the ideal situation?

— With my partner. Our entire history has been filled with trips to discover rare wines. I'm thinking of a trip we took to Salta, in northern Argentina. We drove three and a half hours on an impossible road, which wasn't even paved, to go to a winery just because we were fascinated by the history of that wine. And in the Roussillon region, we went on a wine tour. garage winesWines that people made in their garages! But I think the ideal situation will be the moment when we finally drink our wine, at sunset, while admiring our vineyards.