When the story of modern Rioja is written, Alavesa will have an outsized role to play. The smallest of Rioja’s three production zones has been by far the most influential in shaping Rioja’s new, terroir-focused incarnation, and its small producers are among Rioja’s best and most passionate exponents of wine as an expression of land and place rather than time and oak. That it is also at the centre of an ongoing sub-plot with the potential to bring far more radical change to the region only adds to the sense that little Alavesa is the main character in Rioja’s 21st-century narrative.
We should probably deal with
