A chip off the old block. Sara Pérez, the brilliant oenologist, founder of the winery La Universal in Montsant, is without any doubt the successor of her father, José Luis Pérez, one of the great names of the Spanish oenology. In her career on her own she has signed the sensational Venus and Dido, an expression of the “most radical beauty”, in her own words.

Sara Pérez is the bright continuator of the great vinicultural legacy of her father, José Luis Pérez, biologist, self-taught oenologist, one of the most respected and followed voices of the wine world, owner of Mas Martinet in the Priorat.

“I owe everything to my father: the direct knowledge that he has given to me and the strength that he has transmitted to me, as well as the respect for what is different, for other ways of thinking and working, and, above all, the sense of freedom to discover my own path”, declares Sara.

A personal path that has lead her to begin her own adventure, La Universal, in Montsant. “Founding my own winery has been the natural result of this personal freedom”, she adds. “The time came when I needed to experience, to learn and to make mistakes without the valuable help of my father”.

Cutting the umbilical cord meant moving away from the Priorat, where she was born, and choosing an area that would allow her to start from scratch “without comparisons or measurements”.

And Montsant was the chosen place: “this denomination allowed me to express with wine something different that I could not do in the Priorat. Montsant, because of its climate and soils, afforded me the opportunity to look for the most feminine side of wine: elegance, mystery and freshness through the cariñena variety”, she qualifies. There, the wine-producer cultivates four hectares of own young vineyards, in weathered granite soils (the so-called sauló), of slightly acid and sandy texture, and with little organic matter.