I present a man with a mission: that they populated the Santander coast since the twelfth century and that, for 150 years, they had barely survived wildly between cliffs, brambles and the stone walls that separate the land from the most rugged and suction cup area to the north of the Cantabrian capital. Pedro Agudo Alonso, a 45 -year -old Santander Viticultor, is excited to excite the 18 vineyards with 3,500 vines that has been raised in 8,000 square meters of lands that he has managed to clear, align and protect. Soon, his hoe wine will be more than an environmental project and a test to taste among friends: it will be a commercial reality.
Ask. You worked in a company in Italy when you decided to return to your land, the Santander neighborhood of Cueto, and plant vines. Because?
Answer. I am an economist, there I started as a fellow until I became a manager in a prejudicial mediation company, but I saw how all my colleagues went on vacation to Greece, Croatia or wherever I was while I always returned to my land, to Santander. One day, in Trieste, I met an experience that fascinated me: the osmizas, The small vineyards and orchards where the owners open the doors of their house, put tables, show and sell their surplus of wines or eggs. It seemed spectacular. I asked my mother to look for parras cuttings that are still for these meadows on the coast. I started dedicating the summers to plant them, clear them and keep them and in 2015 I returned and started my project.
P. Did this local grape variety work?
R. Only after this variety is not authorized. And plant those that allow me, with better potential to vinify: Godello, Treixadura or Albariño de Galicia; Hondarribi Zuri of the Basque Country; Chardonnay Francés, Gewürztraminer German. The white and the ink. I am designing the brand and in a year I already hope to market.
P. Along the way he became a professor. Teach tourism.
R. I am a teacher because it allows me to maintain my vocation, which is to recover the vine, give meaning to the landscape and energize it in a different way to the urbanization. Here a golf course was going to be made. Instead, today there are vineyards. And my vineyards are authentic capsules of time. I have planted them on land that I have been buying or that the neighbors lend me and that were being lost. The wrong urbanism policies are destroying a diversity that includes the rural in the city, which is much more attractive than the only urban environment. Soon, to see a cow you will have to go too far.
P. What did he do to learn? To change your profession?
R. I studied a winemaker module in La Rioja. There they would have been delighted with a local variety … and I have read a lot. Thus I know that King Alfonso VIII in the twelfth century gave the fueros to the city of Santander and allowed the neighbors to go out to three leagues from the town to plant apples and vineyard and thus be exempt from paying taxes. Thus these crops were born, between dry stone walls without mortar, which were used to support the parras. The wire came much later.
P. Those typical northern walls are the object of your doctorate.
R. I’m doing it, yes, I’ve been two years. We have more than 25 kilometers of stone walls, many of them falls, which have a lot of potential.
P. And is wine so close to the sea?
R. There they were for centuries. The best tomatoes, the best greenhouses, the best milk is that of cows that graze by the sea. Near iodine. My vines are 30 meters from the cliff.
P. Do you consider it a way to stop touristification?
R. I see it as a way of raising awareness. You have to maintain the rural. My mission is to preserve my people as long as possible. The harvests are made with the neighbors, we organize rail pots and live together, they have told me stories that have heard of generations behind. And I also make routes through the vineyards. People want to know what was here, taste the wine. It is ours and I am delighted.
P. favors wine in the north?
R. In theory yes: and so we have more graduation in wine.
P. It has a rose bush in each vineyard. Is it like the Canarian in the mine?
R. Yes, the Rosal warns you of what is coming, if you get sick, you know you have to treat the vineyard. Then Echo copper, sulfur and prepared ortiga and horsette that macero for ten days. I try to avoid insecticides, there are people who use them, but: I am going to take that wine! While I can, I will do so.
P. What is wine for you? Culture?
R. The wine, if I tell the truth … What I like is the vineyard. See the landscape, the perfect vineyard, the well -armed walls, all clean. If it were the variety of here, I would be more excited about the wine itself, but today it is out.
P. What do we do well and bad in tourism?
R. Tourism allows the economic development of an area and Santander is still fine, but I would not like it to end as Malaga. In addition, it is not what changes the culture of a place or destroys a landscape. It is the real estate industry that carries with it.
P. And how do you see them?
R. Students are a reflection of society, which today is marked by success and successful money, easy money. I think all young people want to have a lamborghini. And they are not worried about what will contaminate.
