Of Rioja’s three sub-zones, Rioja Alavesa is the flyweight. With a total vineyard area of just over 13,000ha, it is by far the smallest, around half the size of heavyweights Rioja Alta and Rioja Oriental.
And yet, when it comes to influence, creativity, dynamism and share of Rioja’s – and Spain’s – best bottles, this sub-region punches way above its weight. This has been the case throughout its history. Take, for example, the story of how Rioja first caught global attention as a fine-wine region in the second half of the 19th century. This was a period when Rioja effectively became a surrogate for one of the biggest names in French wine, when vignerons and châteaux owners from Bordeaux, having seen their own vineyards destroyed by phylloxera, took to Rioja as the perfect place to set up shop and replenish their chais and service thirsty drinkers back home.
The Bordelais brought with them expertise and a particular way of doing things: a winemaking recipe that included careful management of the vineyards, clean fermentation tanks, separating stems and skins for fermentation, and, most famously, ageing in 225-litre oak barriques.
That recipe is, of course, the basis of what we think of today as traditional Rioja – a style of sweetly oaked wine that is strongly associated with a particular corner of the region around the town of Haro in the Rioja Alta sub-region. This is where a cluster of Rioja’s grandest names – its first growths, if you like – were first established in the years after the railway arrived in Haro in 1863: CVNE, La Rioja Alta, R López de Heredia.
But if Haro’s Barrio de la Estación became the
