How a top 100 Master Winemaker is bucking market trends

The challenges for wine producers right now are well documented, but one top 100 Master Winemaker is refining his techniques in a bid to beat market trends. That person is Carlos Villarraso (pictured), the technical director at Spain’s Félix Solís Avantis, who is tackling a trio of challenges through new approaches to winemaking and viticulture – with impressive results already. Among the demands he faces is having to create great wines at keen prices for a cash-strapped consumer, while another is attempting to make lower alcohol products to keep costs down for wines sold in the UK – following the imposition of a tax system related to a drink's ABV (alcohol by volume). A further challenge relates to supplying the burgeoning de-alcoholised wine market, particularly with products that have similar traits to the full-strength product – which is especially difficult to achieve with reds. Villarraso, who managed to enter our top 100 club of Master-winning winemakers for 2025, has achieved an extremely rare feat – picking up the highest possible accolade, a Master medal, for a wine costing under £10, which he did with Mucho Mas Sparkling White NV. Indeed, this successful and highly affordable range of wines delivers remarkable quality for relatively low prices, with Richard Cochrane, MD of Félix Solís UK, telling db at Wine Paris this week just how well-regarded the brand has become. “There are now over 100,000 reviews with over 4 stars for Mucho Mas on Vivino – which is a decent amount of direct consumer feedback,” he recorded at the trade fair yesterday. As for Villarraso’s impact on the wider portfolio of Spanish wines made by Félix Solís Avantis, Cochrane said this too was impressive. “In the past year we have had a lot of medals, and half of those were gold,” he said, before adding by way of contrast, “Four years ago, that was about 20%.” Villarraso’s other change at the Spanish wine producer concerns bringing down ABVs without sacrificing wine quality – a move motivated by a desire to keep wines affordable in the key UK market for the company, and one where duty now increases in line with alcohol levels. For example, he has created a white from Rueda made from organically-grown Verdejo which comes in at 11% – as opposed to a more usual 13% for wines made from this native grape. Commenting on the wine, Cochrane said, “It has provenance, organic certification, and it's naturally lower in alcohol; it’s a really exciting wine, and our customers agree.” So how has Villarraso done it? As he told db, one technique involves careful vineyard selection, with the top 100 Master Winemaker picking out sites with richer, and therefore wetter soils, which producer higher yields – and therefore berries with lower concentrations of fruit sugars (the opposite of what he might have looked for in the past). Then there’s the harvest, with Villarraso opting to pick the bunches earlier, when the grapes have lower sugar levels, and finally, choosing yeasts that ferment the juices more slowly, ensuring a less efficient conversion of sugar to alcohol. As a result of using these specially-selected yeasts, he said, “You might need 19g/l of sugar to create 1% of alcohol rather than 17g/l.” Finally, Villarraso believes he has cracked palatable 0.0% de-alcoholised wine – moving Mucho Mas from 0.5% to 0.0 – something he has also done for Castillo de Albai. Importantly, he is making “a beautiful red with beautiful wine attributes,” according to Cochrane, who adds, “the work he has been doing is genuinely ground-breaking.” Villarraso said that he employed the producer’s “treasure trove of oak-aged material” as a base for his soon-to-be-launched 0.0% red, using mostly Cabernet Sauvignon but also Tempranillo. Because the alcohol-removal process – which employs spinning cone technology – strips some of the aromatics and body from the wine, Villarraso told db that it is best to start with an exaggerated base, with plenty of structure: something he gets from ripe, rich, barrel-aged red wines, and especially the Cabernet Sauvignon grape. Filling out the mid-palate is also a much higher sweetness level compared to a full-strength equivalent, with the yet-to-be-released 0.0% Castillo de Albai red having around 40g/l of sugar, but no added glycerol, which is another way to add body to a de-alcoholised wine. Such innovations – although some are yet to be released – have helped the wines of Félix Solís Avantis buck the current downward trend of wine consumption in the UK, as well as worldwide. “If you bear in mind that the OIV [International Organisation of Vine and Wine] has said that global consumption is back to where it was in 1996*, then you might be thinking, what have we achieved?,” said Cochrane, referring to the many years the trade has spent working hard to promote wine. However, he continued, “It’s not all doom and gloom," pointing out that Félix Solís UK has enjoyed an increase in sales by volume of 12% last year,” commenting, “If you consider that Spain was down nearly 5% then we are definitely rowing in the other direction.” Indeed, Mucho Mas, buoyed by its many accolades, has seen a growth rate of 98% in 2024, according to Cochrane, quoting Nielsen figures for the UK off-trade. He also said that Spain’s top 10 brands had shown declining sales volumes over the course of the past year, “apart from the three we are working on,” which includes Mucho Mas, but also The Guvnor, as well as an exclusive label called Vineyards that Félix Solís Avantis supplies to Tesco. “Clearly there are huge headwinds but we are trying to think about ways to overcome them; find a credible way to navigate through it,” said Cochrane. Summing up on the state of the market at present, he said, “There are opportunities, but it requires innovation.” * Global consumption fell by 2.6% year-on-year to 221 million hectoliters in 2023, according to data published in April 2024 by the International Organization of Vine and Wine (OIV). The last time levels were this low was in 1996.

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