This could be the last chapter of a family dispute over a wine empire, that of Pesquera wines, which began in September 2018, in a law firm. Then, the alma mater of the Pesquera Group, Alejandro Fernández, sat down with the youngest of his four daughters, Eva, to receive legal advice in the face of an unpleasant situation: the winemaker, in the process of divorcing his wife of decades, Emilia Rivera, was fighting a struggle with her and his other three daughters – Olga, Mari Cruz and Lucía -, who supported her, to recover a business valued at more than 100 million euros that he had up and from whom he claimed that they had robbed him. In May 2021, four days before Fernández died in Santander, at the age of 88, she signed a will that left her youngest daughter as the sole and universal heir, alleging mistreatment by the other three (one of the legal causes of disinheritance). Soon, the eldest daughters of the successful winemaker, the man who revolutionized and put Ribera de Duero on the international scene—the first in Spain to receive 100 points from the Parker list in 1982—expressed their plan to fight in court to declare their father’s will null and void. This February, as reported last Tuesday by the local press, the Provincial Court of Valladolid has issued a ruling on the inheritance of the Pesquera Group, and has found reasons to believe that the psychological abuse that the founder of the winery reported of his daughters was real and sustained. According to the provincial court, they will not receive the inheritance they claimed after their appeal was dismissed, although they could appeal in a cassation process, that is, before the Supreme Court. According to the provincial court, it has become clear that the plaintiffs limited their father’s economic capacity and participation in the business community, in what they consider a clear mistreatment of Alejandro Fernández’s own integrity.
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Like almost any conflict, this one also has two versions. In July 2021, Fernández’s disinherited daughters assured that they never prevented their father from entering the wineries, as he denounced, and that they tried to keep the family conflict in the background, focusing on guaranteeing the continuity and quality of their wines. In an interview with EL PAÍS in April 2019, the winemaker said that his three eldest daughters had removed him from all the governing bodies of the companies he had created and, for this reason, he claimed in court his share, 49.72% of the company Bodega Tinto Pesquera, which he began to create in 1975. According to specialists familiar with the matter, the issue of distribution dates back to 1990, when the winemaker divides the shares of the company Alejandro Fernández Tinto Pesquera. So, he keeps 49.72% and his wife the same percentage, giving each of their daughters 0.28%. When the marriage separates, the sum of the share of his wife and the three daughters, who take control, amounts to 50.56% of the shares in the company, which leaves Fernández without the majority.
From left to right, Inés Bocos, Lucía Fernández, Elvira Bocos; Esperanza Rivera, Ángela Pascual, Mari Cruz Fernández, Lucía Pascual and Olga Fernández. COURTESY OF THE FERNÁNDEZ RIVERA FAMILY Asked in 2019 by this newspaper about the beginning of the conflict that confronted three of his four daughters and his wife, Fernández assured: “My daughters, who have been taking over everything little by little.” Eva also gave her version of the events, who said: «I started working alongside my father in 1993, at the end of high school. Then I studied for two years in Madrid, at the Escuela de la Vine, but I got the highest degree by learning from my father.» In fact, she was the winery’s winemaker until June 2017, when her sisters decided to hire a consulting company and, always according to their version, ended up firing her. In 2019, Eva claimed to have been without access to the company facilities for a year. After the death of the winemaker, there was first a leak of the will and then it was officially opened. In the text, Fernández disinherited Olga, Mari Cruz and Lucía even from the forced legitimate third unless justified cause, and left Eva as the sole and universal heir. In the last years of his life, while the father spoke about how painful the judicial process against his daughters was for him, the other side of this story, which ran the family’s businesses for the most part, limited the confrontation to the courts, without speaking out further. However, the impact generated after the revelation of the will, which could affect their 120 employees and the network of wine distributors, made them speak out in a statement in June 2021. In it, and although they referred to the «deep sadness we are going through», they focused on ensuring «the continuity of the current management team and the projects.» Regarding the challenge of the will, the three sisters then based themselves on the fact that children cannot be disinherited without reason (which is why it is understood that they did not consider that there was any) and, fundamentally, that their parents had legally separated but did not prepare the partition notebook of the separation, so they considered that they could not bequeath what is not officially known to belong to you.
Alejandro Fernández and his daughter Eva Fernández, during the presentation of a wine in Madrid, in 2019.Ivan MartínezAlthough the new judicial resolution is a blow for Fernández’s three daughters, they did not always lose against their sister Eva in court. In February 2023, they won the trademark trial, that is, the commercial use of some meanings of Pesquera, specifically three: Pesquera, Janus and Alenza, which had been claimed by Eva and the winemaker before she died.
