Sara Pérez: "Holding a panel discussion on 'Women and Wine' is sexist."

San SebastianSara Pérez (Geneva, 1972) is one of the most respected voices in the wine world. The winemaker at Mas Martinet and Venus La Universal, she was born in Switzerland, where her family was in exile. At the age of two, she returned to Priorat, where she planted roots as deep as they were sentimental. She vehemently defends organic and sustainable viticulture. The daughter of one of the Magnificent Five of Priorat, Josep Lluís Pérez, and the younger daughter of another, René Barbier, Sara Pérez has just been recognized with the prestigious Golden Gueridon at the San Sebastián Gastronomika congress. It was an award ex aequo with Master of Wine Almudena Alberca.

You have often described yourself as outsider. When you're recognized in a place like Gastronomika, does that mean you're still a true celebrity?

— The first surprise is me. First, let me say that the fact that it was a shared award seems superb to me. Especially with Almudena. We have very different visions, but one of the things I like most is being able to fit into this dialogue within the world of wine, which is enormous, and there can be all kinds of visions. I don't know why they gave it to me or who came up with it. What am I doing here? Obviously, I'm still a outsider. In the Catalan Wine GuideOne of the best reds was our wine, the 2023 Camino de Pesseroles. Well, it can't be a DOQ because they've found flaws, and so it's released without a DO. And they've given us the best of the guide, right? There's something I don't quite understand, and so, obviously, I'm outsider in the sense of living on the margins, of opening new paths, and above all, thinking of the new generations. We make mistakes every time we stagnate, when we don't tear down walls, when we don't open windows. I will continue to demand all of this. And this, unfortunately, was outsider 20 years ago and it is now.

Very often the world of wine goes one way and the world of gastronomy goes another.

— One of the things I'm most excited about is being recognized in a place like Gastronomika. We always strive for wine to be food, not alcohol. It's hard to drink a magnum by yourself, isn't it? Wine is about sharing. We make a glass around a table. Because, in the end, it speaks to the same thing as gastronomy. A fish is caught in the sea. It's made in a certain way. And wine is the same. In the end, it's the grape that's cooked. Therefore, it's another gastronomic element. I'm incredibly excited, especially in the current times, when wine consumption is declining.

People don't want to drink that much.

— Wine consumption as an alcohol is declining. Not as a culture, not as a tradition. We keep opening bottles, please, and we keep cooking. It's about talking about life, sharing, evolving, transmitting. Everything we eat nourishes the physical body but also the soul. I was just talking with José Carlos Capel and Julia Pérez, and they were saying that young people don't drink. At fairs or at roundtables, everyone complains that there aren't any young people. And I ask them: has anyone moved into the world of natural wines? It's full of young people. They tell me: "They're just not good." Well, maybe you don't think so, but some of them are really good, and it's the future, because it's full of young people there.

Do you think DOs have gone from being a protective tool to a burden?

— They emerged as protectionism, which is very good, but we must adapt to the times, because otherwise, you become a dinosaur. Things are changing and being reconsidered, but just like in universities, not at the speed required by change: society, consumers, winemakers, the land, and the landscape. A degree of protectionism is very good, especially if traceability or origin can be recognized, but when you combine this with style, it's from the 1980s or 1990s... The new generations are all outside the DO, the interesting wines are outside the DO. A profound rethinking is needed.

What does making wine mean to Sara Pérez?

— It's my means of expression. Someone could paint, and I make wine. It's my dialogue with nature, it's my rest, working in the fields, resting the wines, spending an afternoon in the winery when no one's around and trying to convey my way of understanding the world within a bottle of wine. It's a way of writing a manifesto. For me, it's very important not to go looking for the best wine, because I haven't yet understood what the best wine means, because here we really are getting into conventionality. I want to disturb, to provoke. We must be able to try new things, to let ourselves be moved, and to put ourselves in a position to say, "Maybe I didn't understand." If we're not able to do this with a bottle of wine, what are we not going to do with interpersonal relationships, with religion, with different cultures, with origins, with politics? There are a thousand ways to make wine, and all of them are possibly good.

All?

— Always with a focus on sustainability. Only if it doesn't harm any ecosystem or unbalance it. We can't compromise the quality of life of future generations. And this is an enormous responsibility.

Do you think many people feel excluded from the wine world? When they're presented with the wine list, they don't want it.

— A lot of snobbery has developed around this. In the '90s, all the tasting courses came out, and back then, everyone had to take three tasting courses because otherwise they couldn't drink a bottle of wine. I love it because I go with René [Barbier Jr., his partner] to dinner, and then they give him the wine to try. And that's when I say, "No, no, I'll try it myself."

It's a sexist world.

— A female sommelier can end up furious every day because she's not recognized as a sommelier. Marta Cortizas [of El Celler de Can Roca] has made the same comments to me. We live in a hypermasculinized and androcentric world. The universal standard for everything is that of the white man. It's a constant struggle. We have to keep raising our voices. But we must start talking to each other, too. We can't be permanently angry. We have to start with this feminist anger, but then say enough, bang our fist on the table, and say, "I walk around here and I'm just as valid as anyone else just for the fact of being a person."

I understand that you are not in favor of holding differentiated awards.

— I'm not. I'm fed up with the Barcelona Wine Week tables that are about terroir, wise men... and they're all men and there's no question about it. That's universal. And then there's one called "Wine and Women." We're always the isolated ghetto. If there's a table on terroir, that there's a minimum level of parity. It doesn't always have to be all men. It's as if they gave us a tablet and said, "Talk about women's things." Until the day the panel "Wine and Men" is held, and we find a title like that normal, and they have the nerve to sit all these gentlemen around a table talking about masculinity and wine, and they don't find it ridiculous... Until this happens, "Wine and Women" makes no sense, so we should ridicule ourselves. It's much more sexist than what we've experienced up until now, because we're doing it to ourselves.

How do you imagine the future of Priorat and Montsant?

— Right now, I think we're the first generation born with a climate, the Mediterranean climate, and without moving, we'll die in another climate, which will be semi-arid. When I finished studying biology, I was very interested in forest ecology, and I knew how to read the forests we had, and therefore their evolution. And I was very clear that where there were pine forests, pines would die when they were 80 years old and give way to holm oak forests. It was the mature and resilient forest of the Mediterranean, which would have ended the virulent fires. Well, 30 years later, we don't have holm oak forests. And we continue to plant them, and the DO has just rejected the proposal to reduce planting density. The forest has spent 30 years deciding that it could no longer maintain the same high planting density because there's no water to survive. Therefore, we must change the type of plantations and we must adapt. We always looked north as the place we wanted to reach. Now we must turn our heads and look south. Our forests are migrating north. We must look to what's coming. There are beautiful landscapes in the semi-arid region, but we must learn a new way of farming, because we are the generation that holds the power in our hands. Otherwise, we'll destroy everything because we're nostalgic and continue planting the way we did in the 1970s. It's as easy as looking at Italy and Greece and recognizing their viticulture. There are a multitude of techniques that were already here thousands of years ago.

Should we look for new varieties?

— No, because we already have them. Many were rejected when the DOs were created, for not reaching the required alcohol content or for being considered weak varieties. Today, with climate change, they are much more resilient varieties. Monastrell, white Carignan, strangulas... We could recover pre-phylloxera varieties, which greatly homogenized crops and led to the loss of a lot of genetic heritage. We've preserved it thanks to all these farmers who always end up planting next to their houses, and the regulations say they're not suitable. At what point did a man make a decision in an office that would erode the entire genetic heritage and all the opportunities for new generations?