Enrique García-Escudero, PhD in Agricultural Engineering and Gold Medal for Merit in Oenological Research

Since 2014, coinciding with Jerez’s year as European City of Wine, Williams & Humbert has held an annual Lecture Series with wine always at its heart. Ten years later, in 2024, the winery joined the Wine Cycle organised by the Real Academia de San Dionisio with the collaboration of the Sherry Regulatory Council and our winery. In 2025, Williams & Humbert opened the Wine Cycle with the lecture “The recent evolution of viticulture in Spain”, given by Enrique García-Escudero, PhD in Agricultural Engineering and Gold Medal for Merit in Oenological Research.  

In his talk, García-Escudero traced the evolution of viticulture in Spain over the last fifty years, identifying three phases: traditional viticulture in the 1970s, technical and professional viticulture in the 1980s and 1990s, and 21st-century viticulture, marked by environmental concern and sustainability.

Enrique García-Escudero, PhD in Agricultural Engineering with a higher diploma in Viticulture and Oenology, began his career as a technician at leading wineries in the DOCa Rioja. He has been head of the Wine Research Service at the Government of La Rioja’s Department of Agriculture, head of its Agricultural Research and Plant Health Service, and deputy director of the Institute of Grapevine and Wine Sciences (ICVV). He has taken part in and coordinated more than 90 regional, national and international research projects. In academia, he has taught at the universities of Zaragoza and La Rioja, the Polytechnic University of Madrid and the Autonomous University of Baja California in Mexico. He founded and chaired the Rioja Association for the Progress of Viticulture (ARPROVI) and chaired the Commission for the Accreditation of Oenologists in La Rioja. All this professional, academic and research work earned him the Gold Medal for Merit in Oenological Research from the Spanish Association of Oenologists in 2004.