The Pazo
Visiting the Galician mansion of Pazo de Señoráns, you are taken back in time to the days when Galicia was a rural, feudal and matriarchal society and was at the forefront of 19th century Spanish naturalism. Now converted into a winery, the mansion is a magnificent example of those ancestral Galician houses built in the countryside with all the charm and stateliness of bygone eras. Records that have been found testify that the Pazo de Señoráns dates back to the 16th century, and that over time, its century-old walls have been silent witnesses to all kinds of events and intrigues.
The Winery
The pazo de Señoráns is located at Vilanoviña, in the Pontevedra town of Meis, in the Salnés area, which is one of the Rias Baixas appellation’s sub-zones. The mansion, which is owned by the husband and wife team of Soledad (Marisol) Bueno and Javier Mareque, took on its wine-producing role in 1989, although the estate had been growing vines (which now cover eight hectares or twenty acres) since the beginning of the 1980s. The estate has gained a reputation for producing high quality wines as a result of very careful and rigorous harvesting. Each plot is worked separately, enabling the grapes to be closely observed and identified.
Once the vines have been selected, the grapes are carefully blended for the Pazo
de Señoráns label.
Evolution
The wines of Pazo de señoráns are made at the historical estate proudly displayed today on the winery’s labels, but the early times were very modest ones. In 1979, Marisol Bueno and her husband Javier Mareque acquired an estate planted with kiwi trees and Albariño vines. The house had a winery, which incited the couple to take up the challenge of producing their own wine.
At this stage they were learning the vine-growing ropes, with a little help from Marisol’s background in biology and a local cellar-master who was in charge of the wine-making. Later on, they wondered whether to join the local wine co-operative, but in the end they went their own way and set up as independent producers.
The approach at that time was more one of a small, confidential winery, even though the surface area was in fact quite big, which enabled them to produce grapes not only for their own production, but also for other wineries.
The wine-making techniques were very simple: the grapes were pressed, the wine was put into cask and in March it was sold in bulk.
Later, Marisol, a tenacious and determined woman, set her sights higher and determined to make her own white wine that would be sold in bottle, an aim she first achieved with the 1990 vintage. Her unshakeable confidence in the terroir of her area made up for her lack of experience in the world of business and wine. Rising resolutely to the challenge, Marisol launched the new Pazo de Señoráns venture with a production of seven thousand bottles, which in later years increased to ten thousand. Her belief in success, her tenacity, and her love for Albariño wines led her to become the President of the Rias Baixas Regulating Board at the end of 1986.
