Member of a wine family, Elías began his professional career in 2001, working for Vinícola de Tomelloso, Altosa and Aalto in Ribera del Duero and then moving to Bergkelder in South Africa. In 2005, Elías assumed the Technical Management of the family project Bodegas Verum in Tomelloso. The launch of Verum represents a change of philosophy in the wineries of Castilla La Mancha. In 2016, with the collaboration of oenologist Hans Vinding-Diers, Elías began making wine in Argentine Patagonia, finally assuming the technical direction of the entire project in 2019. Elías has been named one of the 10 oenologists called to change wine in Spain by Decanter magazine. Elías’s vocation is to make wines that are capable of transmitting their origin. He is convinced that it is in the vineyard where the wine is made and he is committed to varietal excellence, to show the essence of the land and its character. It seeks to make wines of great elegance, purity and balance. He likes challenges, respecting the characteristics of the area, in order to produce great wines with as little intervention as possible. It believes in respect for the land and defends sustainability in the vineyard and winery, to seek the maximum expression of each of its estates and plots and become benchmarks in quality wines.

With experience in production in the southern hemisphere (South Africa), Elías López Montero continued looking for new challenges. With climate change everyone looks north but Elías’s experience made him look much further south and in Patagonia, the southernmost region of the planet where wine is made, he found the vineyard and winery to shape the VERUM PATAGONIA project. The collaboration agreement between the López Montero and Río Elorza families to shape the project was easy. In 2016, after testing different grapes in the vineyard, Elías fell in love with the “Maria Victoria” plot, which precisely coincides with his mother’s name. Just as you leave the vineyard, you come across the heart-shaped stone that stars on the label.