RIOJA REGION HOME TO SOME OF COUNTRY’S BEST-LOVED WINES
It is a vista that has inspired generations of painters, photographers, poets and songwriters. Up close, plump grapes dangle on the leafy vines, while in the distance, mountains and a brilliant azure sky frame the colourful patchwork of vineyards that seemingly go for miles.
A guide hands me a clear plastic bag before offering a quick lesson in grape picking. “You don’t look, do it by feeling,” he says as his arm disappears into a bush resplendent in the ripe, deep purple fruit. “Pick on different sides, try different vines.”
As our small group of Canadian writers, bloggers and wine experts indulges in a task that would delight any child, it’s easy to forget for a brief moment the significance of the place where we are gathering our grapes.
We’re in the heart of the Rioja region of Spain, not far from the shimmering waters of the Ebro River in the country’s otherwise landlocked northwest. A little over three hours’ drive from Madrid, it is a place known the world over thanks to its Rioja wine, mostly red but also offering rose and some delicious whites.
In 2017, wines from the Rioja region enjoyed a four per cent growth worldwide and a more than six per cent increase among Canadian consumers, thanks to a combination of affordability and its less oaky, more fruit driven nature. In Ireland, they love the mostly red wine so much, they consumed more than 3.6 million bottles from 2016 to 2017.
We’re here as guests of Osborne (osborne.es), a family-run company founded in Spain in 1772 that today includes restaurants and Iberian ham products along with its wine, sherry, gin and other alcoholic beverages.
In 1973, the family purchased Bodega Montecillo from Jose Luis Navajas, a renowned, thirdgeneration winemaker with no descendants but a keen understanding of what it took to be a success in the highly competitive industry. Today, it plays host to visitors looking to see the renowned winery and region first-hand, as well as enjoying the different qualities of the wines produced in this area known for its three distinct growing regions.
“We’re an age-old winery that creates great modern wines,” says Mercedes Garcia Ruperez, Montecillo’s oenologist, as she guides us through a tasting of the beautiful wines made from the Tempranillo grape, the varietal used in the majority of its wines; she has spent more than a decade working to update Montecillo’s wine offerings. Her vineyards sit in Rioja Alta, the most prestigious of the three sub-regions of the area that sits more than 1,500 metres above sea level.
In addition to her winemaking expertise, Garcia Ruperez, through a translator, mentions another secret ingredient of Montecillo’s success: “a true passion for the land.”
The region’s winemaking history is fascinating. An outbreak of mildew in France in the 1800s decimated its vineyards with phylloxera; the French shared with their Spanish counterparts fermentation techniques that resulted in hardier, longer-lived wines. Later, the arrival of rail transportation opened the market for Rioja wine to be shipped to the U.K. and Africa; today, it’s enjoyed all over the world.
The winery’s original location, with its traditional stone masonry and ancient cellars, is located minutes away from its current state-of-the-art facility. Today, though, the old meets the new as visitors to the site, after touring the new winery and the beautiful, flat-topped hills that are home to its vineyards, return to the historic, 150-year-old winery — home to wines more than a century old — for tastings of the great wine of Rioja, the best known of Spain’s more than 60 wine regions.