Ignacio Príncipe

Where It Started The beginning is both a date and a place. In 2000, Ignacio Príncipe founded Bodega César Príncipe in Fuensaldaña, tying his own name to a cellar already framed by family memory and by four generations of winegrowing life. That origin carries weight because the winery is not described as a project detached from its ground. Its identity comes through a family line dedicated to wine, with Ignacio now carrying the house as current owner and the person who heads Bodegas César Príncipe in Fuensaldaña. The geography is Cigales, and the grape at the center is Tempranillo. His specialty is Tempranillo-based red wines from Cigales, including wines drawn from very old vines, a phrase that gives the work its most direct vocabulary: age, place, and red wine made from the local inheritance.

Who Shaped Them The shaping force around Ignacio Príncipe is the family winery itself. Four generations dedicated to wine form the human line behind the bottles, a lineage less about a named school than about continuity through vineyards, cellar decisions, and the repeated work of making red wine in the same Spanish landscape. That sense of succession gives his role a particular weight. To found the winery in 2000 and to own it now is to stand at a crossing point between what came before and what is being bottled for the next table, the next vintage, the next drinker who meets Fuensaldaña through Tempranillo. Influence here is carried through parcels as much as people. The flagship wine, César Príncipe, is made from Tempranillo from old vineyards 70 to 100 years old, sourced from the winery’s four best parcels in Fuensaldaña. Those figures give the wine its family-story precision: old vines, selected plots, and a name that connects bottle, cellar, and maker.

The Work Today

Today, the work led by Ignacio Príncipe remains focused on Tempranillo-based reds from Cigales. The wines are not presented as abstractions; they are tied to vine age, cultivation, hand work, and the difference between a flagship bottling and a more everyday expression. César Príncipe is the flagship Spanish red wine of the winery, built from Tempranillo grown in old vineyards of 70 to 100 years, with fruit taken from four selected parcels in Fuensaldaña. It is the bottle that most clearly gathers the house’s central commitments into one wine: old vines, Cigales red-wine tradition, and a close reading of place. A second marker of the cellar’s range is 13 Cántaros Nicolás, described as a more everyday wine from Bodegas César Príncipe. It is 100% Tempranillo from 20-year-old vines that are organically cultivated and hand-picked, a practical counterpoint to the flagship while still staying inside the same grape and family vocabulary. Read together, the two wines show the span of Ignacio Príncipe’s work: one wine drawn from very old vines and four best parcels; another from younger, organically cultivated Tempranillo meant for a more everyday place at the table. Both keep the story close to Fuensaldaña, where the family line and the cellar’s present work meet.