Spain’s most famous gourmet died on 18 October, five days after suffering a stroke in his office. Above, de la Serna at work.
Madrid-based Víctor de la Serna had an unparalleled reputation that combined intense knowledge of wine, food, restaurants, baseball, world events, technology and journalism.
I, and thousands of readers and wine students worldwide, benefited hugely from his expertise when he was Spanish consultant on both The World Atlas of Wine and The Oxford Companion to Wine. Working with him was a joy. As a professional journalist he well understood the importance of deadlines, and I could rely utterly on his intricate and up-to-date knowledge of what was going on in Spanish cellars and vineyards.
He was educated in the US and always sounded more American than Spanish, but he could not have cared more about the Spanish wine scene. He was one of the first journalists on Spain’s second biggest-selling newspaper El Mundo when it was first published in 1989 and ended up as deputy editor. Always very aware of the opportunities of the internet, he founded elmundovino.com very early in its life. Our first Spanish specialist Luis Gutiérrez has written lovingly here about the joys of joining de la Serna’s tasting group for this online resource.
Over the years our paths crossed, as on the conference platform in Barcelona shown above. He was an early Purple Pager and there are no fewer than 69 articles on this website which mention de la Serna, often quoting him. But my strongest memory of him is during the whirlwind tour of northern Spain he was kind enough to organise for me at the beginning of this century, wanting to correct my ignorance, I’m sure. (He was a famously fast driver and loved cars. Spain’s EU-funded network of autopistas was surely made for him.) During our few days it was clear that he was hugely respected by all the wine producers we met, and he was great company, having a fine sense of humour and a wide canvas of knowledge – not just wine knowledge – to draw on.
He came to our place in the Languedoc to scoop me up for our tour, spending a night there. And there was a memorable dinner at our old family home in London when he brought his great friend Carlos Falcó, Marqués de Griñón, who founded the groundbreaking wine estate in Castilla-La Mancha Dominio de Valdepusa. It was the first estate to qualify as a vino de pago, a single-vineyard recognised as of exceptional quality.
Whereas Falcó was courtesy and discretion incarnate, de la Serna was ebullient and loved an argument. Once he took to social media he relished controversy. When Twitter was at its height, he would admonish me with various posts always including ‘, Jancis’. I remember in particular that we clashed over the influence of indigenous grape varieties on the Spanish wine scene. At the time I was seeing far too much Tempranillo and not enough of the minor players. Víctor of course was way ahead of me and could already see that the lesser varieties were increasingly celebrated. You can read some of the evidence in these much more recent accounts of Spanish wines at Les Caves de Pyrène and the brilliant Viñateros tasting in London earlier this year.
Like Falcó, de le Serna became a wine producer in a non-classic region, founding Finca Sandoval in Manchuela almost a quarter of a century ago. He initially planted Syrah but became increasingly a champion of the local grape Bobal as well as Monastrell. I came across a report de la Serna sent of the rainy 2022 vintage in Spain which has eerie echoes of the terrible rains currently being experienced in Valencia which have claimed more than 90 lives.
He sold his beloved wine estate a few years ago but clearly chose his successor wisely, to judge from a tasting I attended on Tuesday this week of wines from the Grandes Pagos de España estates, which include both Finca Sandoval and Dominio de Valdepusa. When I arrived, the first thing the Spanish organisers said to me sadly was, ‘Víctor is dead’.
Contemporary wine writer José Peñin had told me the terrible news within hours of his demise; one of our first Purple Pagers, Rodrigo Mainardi of Brazil, wrote in as well. De la Serna’s network was wide, his influence worldwide.
Thank you, Víctor. You will be sorely missed.