Abadía Retuerta Launches its Academia de Terruño

Renowned Spanish winery Abadía Retuerta has launched a unique new project called Academia de Terruño. The winery, located in the Duero River Valley, believes that its estate wines have the ability to express the land’s personality and singularity. With that in mind, it created an academy to teach professionals all about the concept of the terruño, or native land.

This is a pioneering project aimed at everyone from catering school students to sommeliers. It will analyze the concept of “native land” and look at aspects such as soil, climate, vineyards, wines and projects, and it will delve deeper into issues like autochthonous and foreign varieties, commercial yeasts; spontaneous fermentation; biodynamic winemaking; and climate change.

The course content has been created by leading figures in the industry, including Ángel Anocíbar, the winery’s technical director, and Vicente Sotés, a winemaking professor at the Technical University of Madrid. Others involved in the project include Pedro Ballesteros, MW; María José Huertas, the sommelier at La Terraza del Casino; and Nathanaël Berbessou, who founded Bodeboca.com.

This new academy aims to provide wine students and experts alike with training that supplements traditional education in this area, using real examples and data. The pilot program was launched successful in 2018 and more students are expected to enroll in 2019.