Lola Palacios: "If I have been able to have a daughter, will I not be able to make my wine? Being a mother has changed my perspective on life; I feel more confident than ever"

BarcelonaI interview the winemaker Lola Palacios (Alfaro, 1997) at the Llotja de Barcelona on Monday, June 8. She has come from the city of Alfaro, La Rioja, for the event organized by the distributor Vila Viniteca so that interested the public can taste (and buy) exclusively the 2025 wines. Last year she had to go back home when she was arriving in Barcelona because her pregnancy caused her constant vomiting. This year, her daughter, Federica, is already eight months old, and she has been able to spend the whole day there. She says that never before today has she felt that women have superpowers, and they have them because Lola assures that she works more efficiently than ever in the three family wineries and at the same time takes care of her daughter with all her love. Lola is a passionate woman, she speaks quickly, in Catalan and in Spanish, and she has very clear ideas.

You speak Catalan.

— I lived in Gratallops until I was eight years old. I keep very good friends in Priorat. I have a good friend in Falset, Unai, who has a restaurant with his mother, Kabbalah. The food is very good there and they have an incredible wine list; I recommend it to you as well as the others in Priorat. My school in Falset was Antoni Vilanova. When I started to speak, I only spoke Catalan. And in the family, my parents and my paternal grandfather, grandfather José Palacios, understood me. Did you know he spoke Catalan? He had many Catalan friends, I know he learned it because, during the Civil War, he lived with some relatives in Barcelona. That's why the Alfaro winery is called J. Palacios and the one in Bierzo, descendants of J. Palacios, in his honor. My grandfather loved to speak Catalan with me.

You work in the three family wineries, where your father is also present: the one in Alfaro, which belonged to your grandfather; the one in Bierzo, with your cousin, and the one in Gratallops.

— I am the sixth generation of winegrowers and wine producers. The Alfaro winery was created in 1947 by my and my grandmother; my father joined the grandparents' winery one hundred percent in 2000, when my grandfather died. My father decided in 1989 to settle in Priorat, and it went very well for him! My cousin Ricardo, my father's nephew, returned from France, where he had worked, and with my father they opened a winery in the DO Bierzo in 1999. And these are the three wineries where I work. We all do everything. We don't have distributed departments of who does what like big companies do. We are all in the vineyard, we all do marketing, we all make the wines. We export our wines to ninety countries.

You have a prodigious education, if I may say so. You studied Viticulture and Oenology at the universities of Bordeaux and Dijon, France. You studied marketing and communication at IE University in Madrid. And then you did internships at the wineries Domaine de la Romanée-Conti, Clos de Tart, Domaine Prieuré, in Burgundy.

— We were all trained in France, and we have worked there. We know that France is the cradle of great wine, but that did not close my mind to knowing what was beyond. So I went to Napa, to the Promontory winery for six months. Both my father and I believed that we had to learn about the vineyard and the wine made on the other side of the world as well, that we shouldn't just stick to learning from France.

You have an education perhaps more complete than your father's.

— He had a very great education: he studied in France and worked at Château Pétrus. I don't know if I could say I have more training than him or not, but I believe that everything my father and my cousin have achieved surpasses any great academic training. I have enormous respect for all their work and I even feel a certain pressure for the challenge ahead of me (always in a good way). Nevertheless, he always tells me that, in reality, my training is much broader than his and that I have been acquiring it since I was very young.

What does he tell you about this that you are telling me now?

— He always tells me that everything I have drunk so far, he didn't start drinking until many years later. He assures me that just with this fact, having drunk incredible wines when young, that is already a great learning experience. I don't compare myself to my father, because what he is, I will never be, above all I won't be it because I will be it in my own way. Do you know that my first tooth fell out in the L'ermita vineyard?

Explain it to me.

— Since I was little, I have run through the vineyards. The daily work we have in the mornings is to walk through the vineyards. Neither my parents nor I do sports, because our sport is walking through the vineyard. Then, there in the L'ermita del Priorat vineyard, while eating a piece of potato omelet, my first tooth fell out.

L’Ermita is one of your wines that costs four figures.

— Yes, l’Ermita is like the sister I never had. The capricious one of the house. [Laughs]. In the summers, when school ended in the United States, where I studied high school, or in France, she would come home and work in the family vineyard. At night she would go out with my friends, and the next day she would be in the vineyard, because at home they let me go out partying if I was working like everyone else the following day. And I, as a proud daughter, did it. When San Fermín arrived in Pamplona, she went out every night, and didn't miss a single morning to work. And it's that working has always pleased us very much in our family.

You were at the Domaine de la Romanée-Conti winery in Burgundy.

— Everyone thought I was there because I am who I am. And no, forgive me, it was very difficult for them to hire me to work there, because they had the winery full, because they personally choose the interns. So they told me no, that the only place they could hire me was in the vineyard, and I said yes. I was harvesting. We started at five in the morning, and at four in the afternoon, we went into the winery to sort the grapes. I also cleaned the winery. And that's how one day the winemaker asked me if I wanted to stay to vinify. I jumped for joy. I said yes, of course. Then I stayed until the end of the vinifications. That's when I understood what it means to make wine, the importance of the place. It was four months that I spent and I haven't forgotten them. I remember the owner, Mr. Aubert de Villaine, 87 years old, who walked through the vineyards every morning. I congratulated him one morning, and he humbly told me that I shouldn't, because the merit belonged to the vineyards.

I interviewed your father a few months ago and he told me his dream was to see you making your wine.

— I think about it a lot. I am a mother, and since I have been, I have shed complexes. If I was able to have a daughter, won't I be able to make my wine? Being a mother has changed my perspective on life; I feel more secure than ever. I know people will judge me no matter what I do. I have accepted it; I am calmer. You know that my father left home with nothing, and from scratch, he achieved everything he has.

Count on your parents' support for whatever you do.

— I value it a lot. I want to make a very thoughtful wine. Not yet, because I have many things on my mind, but I don't want to rush. My father and I taste together, because I am especially focused on winemaking. He decides more than I do, which is logical, because I am still learning. And I learn a lot from him.

And now what?

— I am learning what I had never learned anywhere else, which is something very true, which is the philosophy he has about wine, about the vineyard, about what wine transmits.

What is this philosophy?

— Passion, it has a lot of passion. And it has taught me that the vineyard does not belong to us, but that the vineyard is a legacy that we must take care of so that future generations can also enjoy it. At L'Ermita, where the hermitage of La Consolació is, there is a 116-year-old vineyard that someone planted one day, so now it is up to us to take care of it, to accompany it so that it continues.

Lola, you who are 28 years old, can you tell me if young people don't drink wine, what is it called.

— It makes me very angry that they say the wine crisis is because young people don't drink wine, don't drink alcohol. This idea has become a monothematic obsession, and I say that if young people don't drink wine, it must be due to the education they have received from older generations. Older people don't realize they are constantly complaining and don't realize they are digging their own grave. Their negativity only drives people away from wine. I'm outside this topic, because I think it's the older generation that doesn't drink wine, who used to drink much more. Before, older people used to go from bar to bar to drink it, and now they don't. We must curb these negative ideas and adapt to new times. We must stop complaining and turn these arguments around.

And how can we turn this around?

— We must make wines with purity, with soul and with that magic that invites us to love wine and celebrate life with anyone; wines that call you, that captivate you and make you enjoy the moment. We must demonstrate that wine is synonymous with enjoyment, inspiration and emotion. How lucky I am to have chosen this sector. Toasting is living!