Marqués de Riscal, one of Spain's historic wine houses, traveled to the Dominican Republic this month to honor Don Peppino Bonarelli, founder of the wine company El Catador, as it celebrates 50 years in business.
The Spanish winery brought two exceptionally selected vintages from its centuries-old cellars for the occasion: a 1956 bottle, the centerpiece of a historic tasting, and a 1946 bottle, reserved for a special tribute to Don Peppino.
The 1946 bottle corresponds to Don Peppino's birth year and spent eight decades in Marqués de Riscal's cellars before making the journey to Santo Domingo.
A personal handover
Ricardo Diéguez, chief executive of Herederos del Marqués de Riscal, personally presented the bottle to Don Peppino during an intimate gathering with family, friends and people closely tied to El Catador's history.
The gesture carried particular weight in a year when El Catador is marking half a century of activity.
Giuseppe Bonarelli, executive president of El Catador, said that when a business relationship lasts almost as long as the company itself, it can no longer simply be called a business relationship, calling it instead part of the company's own history.
Two legacies, five decades apart
El Catador was founded in 1976 and has since tracked the growth of wine culture in the Dominican Republic, bringing major wine houses and wine-producing regions closer to the country while working steadily to build knowledge and train new generations of wine lovers.
The handover of the 1946 bottle became a symbolic meeting between two legacies: that of Marqués de Riscal, one of Spain's most emblematic historic wineries, and that of El Catador, a company born from the Bonarelli family's passion for wine that, fifty years on, continues to build a culture of knowledge, gathering and celebration around it.
Tasting a 1956 vintage
The event continued with the opening and tasting of an exceptional 1956 Marqués de Riscal vintage, allowing guests to experience the winery's history through a wine that has crossed seven decades and still carries in each glass the expression of another era.
In its 50th anniversary year, the gathering also revisited a conviction that has guided El Catador since its founding: that wine goes beyond the bottle, standing instead for memory, culture and connection, and serving as a way to bring generations together around the same table.
