Last October, the founding partners of the international law firm Pellicer & Heredia, Ignacio Pellicer and Pedro Heredia, enjoyed the hospitality of Bodegas Monóvar as a place to interview the English writer, Rob Innis.
Pellicer & Heredia is the law firm that specializes in helping foreigners in Spain. It has six offices on the Costa Blanca, in the South-East of Spain, with lawyers who attend to their clients in their own language: Spanish, English, French, Russian and Dutch, among others. Beyond providing the legal services required by clients, Pellicer & Heredia wants to make the lifestyle in Spain known through activities such as this, which bring the country closer to its new neighbors.
The British writer Rob Innis was pleasantly surprised by the tradition and history of Fondillon wine, a wine with more than 500 years of tradition, also known as the wine of kings and which is only produced in the province of Alicante under strict production conditions.
Just the day before, the Alicante winery had received the Spanish Food Award from the Ministry of Agriculture for the Best Wine of 2020 with the 50-year-old Fondillón wine “Siempre te esperaré” (“I will always wait for you”), which they tasted during the interview.
Accompanied by Bodegas Monóvar’s oenologist, Salvador Poveda and the Director of Communication and Marketing, Eva Miñano, both lawyers and the British writer visited the winery where they learned step by step how this wine is made, from growing the grapes to harvesting, treatment and bottling in barrels.
For a wine to be called Fondillon, it must be at least 10 years in barrels, although this winery has an internal protocol in which they keep the wine for at least 20 years in Canadian oak barrels. The lawyers and the writer were shocked to learn that the wine from the grapes they saw pressed yesterday will not be drunk until at least 2040.
Spain: a wine and a life for everyone.
During the interview in the oldest part of the winery, the vestry, Rob Innis spoke about his experience as a resident in Spain for over 20 years. Rob Innis insisted on the diversity of lifestyles that can be led in the country and advised those who are thinking of coming to Spain to follow the next steps to find their new home.
Firstly, make a list of the lifestyle and environment you want: beach, mountain, city, golf course, small town, etc. and then look for a house that meets the conditions you want. It is important at this time to ensure that the website where information is sought is authoritative and professional, is authorized and has reliable sources.
Secondly, Rob Innis advised to go to an independent law firm, not related to the entity or person selling the property, to avoid fraud and to ensure that all steps are followed according to the law. Buying a house in Spain has some very specific procedures that must be carried out in order and on time to avoid problems, as well as the payment of taxes and legal obligations while living in the country.
In this way, one avoids “falling in love” with a particular house and then encountering many problems or even deception in order to acquire it. At Pellicer & Heredia, these are common cases that lawyers help to solve.
In the vestry of Bodegas Monóvar, surrounded by barrels of bottled wine since 1930, the British journalist and the lawyers talked about the main difficulties that foreigners encounter when they come to live in Spain, about the different lifestyles they can lead; they talked about access to Spanish public and also private health care and the journalist related his experience as a resident in a city of almost 90,000 inhabitants (Torrevieja), in a smaller population and in the town where he now lives, Aigues de Busot. Three lifestyles in three different places.
The accessibility to high-speed Internet (up to 600M), the variety of landscapes, activities, how public transport and communications are, the pleasentness of the climate on the Costa Blanca and other curious stories were the content of the interview conducted at the winery with the Best Wine of Spain 2020. And with this they toasted to the next 20 years.
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