Maria Larrea

Coming Up

Imperial is the reference point in Maria Larrea’s work: a wine that concentrates the precision, patience, and measured authority of the CVNE cellar. The technical base behind that standard was set at University of Montpellier, where a rigorous training environment gave her the framework for exactness. From there, her work took shape around structure, control, and repeatable decisions rather than ornament. At CVNE, Maria Larrea serves as Head Winemaker and Technical Director, placing her where the estate’s most exacting calls are made.

Where They Are Now

Wine at this level depends as much on restraint as on selection, and Maria Larrea’s approach makes that plain in the way she describes Imperial. The production is kept within narrow limits, and the wine is made only in the years that meet her standard; Maria Larrea presents that not as a marketing line but as a working rule. The craft here is less about intervention than judgment: deciding when to proceed, when to hold back, and when the material does not justify a release. That same discipline runs through the broader work at CVNE. Maria Larrea’s focus appears to sit with the conditions that allow a wine to earn its place in the cellar, not just the result in bottle. Imperial is the clearest statement of that standard, but the larger method is consistent: care, exactitude, and no compromise where character is at stake.

Signature

Maria Larrea’s signature wines include Imperial, Monopole Clásico, Monopole, and Imperial Gran Reserva 2004. Taken together, they show a winemaker working across different expressions while keeping the same priorities in view: precision, balance, and an ear for how a wine holds over time. The labels differ, but the underlying discipline remains the same across Maria Larrea’s range.

In Their Words “We make this wine in a very artisanal way and only in those years when we consider that the quality will be optimal, otherwise it is not made.” “I ask a wine to make me enjoy the moment, the company and to last in my memory.”