Juan Bautista Sáenz

Training at University of La Rioja gave Juan Bautista Sáenz the academic base before he entered the cellar with his first vintage at Dinastía Vivanco (1999). From there, the work moved through small wine projects with Pablo Eguzkiza and Telmo Rodríguez, across Málaga, Alicante, Cebreros, Toro, Rueda, Ribera del Duero, Rioja, and Galicia between 2000 and 2022. The range of those regions points to a career spent handling different vineyard conditions and cellar demands, learning how each place asks for its own approach. Since 2022, he has been in field management and production at Bodegas y Viñedos Gómez Cruzado, bringing vineyard work and winery execution into the same brief.

Since 2023, Juan Bautista Sáenz has served as Technical Director and winemaker at Bodegas y Viñedos Gómez Cruzado in Haro. The role brings together two parts of the trade that have run through his work from the start: reading fruit and site in the field, then carrying that material through to finished wine. Haro places that practice inside one of Rioja’s central wine towns, where long experience in the region still matters.

Viña Motulleri is among Juan Bautista Sáenz’s signature wines. It sits in line with a working style defined by detail, by attention to what each project requires, and by the discipline needed to keep structure clear without overworking the material.

The clearest public marker in his record is the 2023 appointment as Technical Director and winemaker at Bodegas y Viñedos Gómez Cruzado. It follows a straight sequence: Chemistry and Oenology studies, a first vintage at Dinastía Vivanco in 1999, two decades of work across Spanish wine regions, and then a leadership post in Haro that reflects the accumulation of that experience.