Pago de Carraovejas

The dream of Jose Maria Ruiz

At the end of the 1980s, Jose Maria Ruiz realised his dream of creating a winery to produce wines in the heart of the Ribera del Duero.

On the slopes of Carraovejas, next to the Castle of Peñafiel, what was then a modest winery was born. In 1991, its first vintage, it harvested just 70,000 kg of grapes from its first 25 hectares of production. Today, almost 30 years later, with his son Pedro Ruiz Aragoneses at the helm, the winery has established itself as a national and international benchmark in its range.

The winemaking methodology

Estate wines controlled from the vineyard to the bottle with autonomous equipment and processes, from working with the estate's own yeasts and bacteria to innovative winemaking systems with gravity production systems without the need for pumping or one of the most heterogeneous and exhaustive selections of fine-grained French cooperages.

All of this from the conviction and respect for a unique site, with a very specific orography, from a valley area to terraced mountain areas or the already famous Cuesta de Las Liebres plot, starting from an average altitude of 840 metres.

Pago de Carraovejas today

Today, Pago de Carraovejas is an icon that has transcended even the limitations of traditional Ribera del Duero labelling, strictly adhering to the appropriate ageing times for each wine that the corresponding raw material requires to achieve the perfect balance between fruit and oak, innovation and classicism.