The winery’s history goes back more than two hundred years to the town of La Horra in the heart of the Ribera del Duero region.
In 1777 Abundio Balbás, the pioneer, began to use his own grapes to produce red wine for local consumption, which he transported and distributed in wineskins known as odres, which he made himself. The family continued to make and sell wineskins until the arrival of glass bottles.
The name of Balbás has been linked to wine for six generations and, today, it’s Abundio’s great-great-grandson, Juan José Balbás, who runs the company and is a key figure in the Ribera del Duero D.O. In fact, Bodegas Balbás was one of the pioneering wineries that helped to set up the appellation in 1982, which covers more than 300 wineries today. Juan José Balbás was president of the D.O. Regulatory Council from 1996 to 2000.