Julia Casado 'La del Terreno'

Wine Story

It was in the German Palatinate that I first set foot in a vineyard in May 2008. I was studying for several years at the Musikhochschule Heidelberg-Mannheim and decided to take a 6-month break to do an Erasmus internship at a winery in the ‘Weinstrasse’ and thus finish the Agricultural Engineering studies that I still had to complete at the UMH in Elche.

That same year, I got the scholarship to study in Cuba. I went straight back to do the grape harvest, and then I decided to enrol in Oenology. I spent a year in Berlin, working in the Department of Soil Science at the University of Humboldt and with another scholarship to graduate in German at the Goethe Institut. When I finished my degree in Oenology in 2010, I was awarded the extraordinary end-of-degree prize, which consisted of finishing my studies with a 3-month stay at the Vega Sicilia winery, also with a scholarship.

When I started my small project in 2016, I still had no land or winery, nor any family connection with viticulture or the world of wine. I came to this profession out of curiosity, letting myself be led by intuition; and also by chance, through small decisions that were turning the course of my life as a student in Germany and Spain, and also in Cuba, where I spent three months thanks to a scholarship to study agroecology and rural development at the University of Havana. It was there that the two worlds of music and agriculture intersected, and where my relationship to both changed forever.

Thanks to these experiences I managed to work in other wineries, both in Argentina and in Spain (specifically in the Jumilla area), until 2015. So I didn't have any experience as an entrepreneur, nor any nearby example to draw inspiration from or ask for advice... That's probably why, out of unconsciousness, I took the plunge to start my own project.