With the help of his daughter Amelia, Eduardo Garrido still manages his small winery in Ábalos where he makes classic-style but fruit-driven wines.  Eduardo Garrido García (Semicrianza, Crianza, Reserva and Gran Reserva) are his wines. “I’m old school; I only know how to make fine wines and I barely own two hectares,” he says. “I’ve always been fond of blending -Garnacha from Rioja Baja is great to blend with our local Tempranillo and we also add a little bit of Graciano to our Gran Reserva. If the truth be told, I don’t even understand the language of winemakers these days!,” he jokes.

Amelia is now the key figure at Bodegas Eduardo Garrido, which exports a sizeable part of its production to the US. A part-time resident in Miami, Amelia takes care of the increasingly burdensome admin jobs. “I grew up among vines and tanks with my grandfather and my father; it’s tough to juggle the management of the winery here with my family life in the US, but it is also very rewarding,” she explains.

A visit to Bodegas Eduardo Garrido is always full of surprises. Having the chance to talk to a historic producer is a privilege in itself but Eduardo Garrido is also a great collector. On the first floor of his house-cum-bodega, Garrido boasts a veritable ethnographic museum -an indescribable and unclassifiable collection of memorabilia which his daughter Amelia is set on cataloging even though she is aware that it will take her well over a year. All kinds of artifacts adorn the space: a variety of farming and winemaking tools (skins, traditional conical buckets called comportillos, presses…), dozens and dozens of graphic documents and texts from the days of the Spanish Republic, the Civil War, the post-war and the dictatorship…

The museum will surprise visitors. Among its hundreds of books, there are wonderful curiosities such as El Arte de Cocinar (The Art of Cooking), an original publication from 1728 that is an object of desire for many Michelin-starred chefs but if you visit this bodega, pay special attention to one of them: a winemaking treaty, hand-written in calligraphy and with drawings of the entire process, written by Vicente Garrido, Eduardo’s father, during his studies at Haro’s Oenological Station in 1919-1920.

Rafael and his brother grew up with those classic and delicate Rioja wines; colour and structure were important but not as much as finesse. “There were fine wines and syrupy wines, wines to drink and wines to taste; we decided to make wines to drink”.

The Pérez González brothers own 70 hectares of vineyards, 60 of them in the vicinity of Fuenmayor. In fact, their focus since they took control of Vallemayor has been securing more land. “We have invested heavily over the years; when our dad past away in 2006, we had 35 hectares of vines. We have been working in drywall offices in the winery until recently to ensure our grape supply.”

Vallemayor bottles 50% of its production and sells the remainder in bulk. “During the harvest, we must make room in the tanks to ensure that our wine production reaches every single one of our sales channels. We do this without renouncing to offer consistent quality throughout the entire vintage,” they explain. “Besides, making wines in bulk gives us the capacity to take on increased bottlings using our own wines.”

The winery’s portfolio includes three different ranges. The entry level wines are a white, a rosé and a red. “All of them are destemmed and fresh; we sacrifice power to gain finesse,” says Rafael. Vallemayor Crianza, Reserva and Gran Reserva represent a more traditional style. “We blend Tempranillo with a little bit of Mazuelo and Graciano; the latter two gain more presence in the wines with longer ageing. In terms of oak barrels, we tend to use a higher proportion of French oak in wines meant for prolonged ageing.”

Lastly, the Vallemayor range includes two single vineyard wines, Viña La Encineda and Viña Cerradilla, and a barrel-fermented white from 60-year-old Viura vines. “These grapes are sourced from old vines and are fermented in new oak; the wines are more modern, but we maintain our own style in terms of ripening and extraction.”

As befits their classic style, Vallemayor sells most of its wine to the UK. “Out of the 450,000 bottles we produce, over 200,000 are sent to the British market. The recession wiped out our on-trade distribution in Spain and we don’t pursue an aggressive commercial policy to carve a niche in the supermarket shelves.”

But the good times didn’t last long. “In 2000 prices collapsed. At that time, the plan was to bottle and sell half of my production and sell the rest in bulk to other producers to offset my investment,” he explains. “The problem was that nobody wanted the wine so we just had to take it on the chin and carry on.” Nowadays Bodegas Gerardo Viteri grows 35 hectares of vines in Logroño, Lapuebla, Lanciego and Laserna and produces 250,000 bottles under its own brand. “Sales are good in surrounding regions like Bilbao, Vitoria or Logroño so what’s the point in complicating things with exports and paperwork?”

Gerardo Viteri doesn’t hide a mischievous grin when he talks about his impending retirement. His son David works in the vineyards and the winery but, being almost 67, he knows that, one way or another, he will be there most days of the rest of his life: “Where would I go? This is the only thing I know”.

His young wines (red, rosé and white) are called Viterico; the crianza and reserva go by the name of Legado de Viteri. Honest, unpretentious wines with Tempranillo playing the leading role. “This area is ideal for Tempranillo, with uncompacted limestone soils that retain water which help to produce fresh and pleasant wines,” he adds. “I don’t really understand the new wave of structured, powerful wines that are made these days; I like wines that are meant to be enjoyed with a good chat among family and friends; the kind of wines that you easily finish the bottle.”

One of them was Julio Ramírez de la Piscina. Born in Ábalos in a family of millers, Julio worked the land and was the father of Cecilio and Pilar, the two siblings who now run the winery after the early death of Julio jr, their brother. Known as ‘el Riojano’, Julio, the patriarch, opened up a small store to sell his wines in the San Francisco district in Bilbao in 1961. “His early success spurred him to deliver wine with a motorbike and a trolley around the bars in his neighborhood and later to the rest of Bilbao,” remembers Cecilio.

In the mid 1980s, siblings Cecilio, Pilar and Julio took over the business. They built a winery next to the original family bodega, constructed by their maternal grandfather in San Vicente in the 1930s. They started to bottle Rioja wine under the brand Ramírez de la Piscina, the family surname, with grapes sourced from their own vineyards in Ábalos and from other growers in the Sonsierra. The critics’ good ratings helped them to export their first bottles to the US in 1990.

Their current bodega in San Vicente dates from 2001 and was built to handle close to 600,000 bottles. Their range of wines includes several categories: carbonic maceration (young) wines, Crianza, Reserva and Gran Reserva (with destemmed grapes). “I always liked life in the bodega even though I graduated in Chemistry at the university in Bilbao and my first working experience was in graphic arts,” recalls Cecilio. The new generation —Pilar’s children— has joined this saga, whose family name is linked to Santa María de la Piscina, a spectacular Romanesque church in San Vicente.

As well as the traditional range of Rioja classics, Ramírez de la Piscina makes two well-regarded wines labelled as Selection —a Crianza and a Reserva with the oldest vines in the estate which are aged in American and French oak barrels. “They have been the official wines of Rioja’s Control Board in four of the last five years,” explains Cecilio. The family welcomes visitors to their bodega on weekdays and weekends with prior appointment.

The quality of their wines has been recognized in numerous international competitions as well as by world-acclaimed experts.

Bodegas Abeica makes barrel-aged wines (crianza, reserva and gran reserva) under the brands Longrande and Abeica. However, after reducing its barrel stock, wines are aged in oak only on special vintages: “We live off Chulato and we ‘travel’ with Longrande -in reference to their exports-”, Isabel jokes. Abeica also makes a barrel-fermented Viura white called Abaris, which is aged on its lees.

Bodegas Abeica grew in the 1990s buying grapes from neighbouring growers until, against all commercial logic, the four siblings decided to stop: “It was a crucial turning point; we decided that we would not only carry forward, but that all our wines would be made exclusively with grapes from our own vineyards”, explains Isabel. “If we had grown further it would no longer be a family business. The four of us take care of everything, both in the vineyards and the winery. Our tasks are more or less defined, but we all lend a hand when someone needs help”.

The family behind Bodegas Abeica owns 30 hectares under vine in Ábalos and manage an additional six in San Vicente, which belong to their in-laws. It’s hard not to find Isabel at the bodega, whose tours are almost ‘à la carte’: “We visit the winery, the vineyards and the ancient rock art sites in the vicinity. We finish with a tasting but, truth be told, we encourage our visitors to enjoy wine, not to describe it with fancy, trivial words”. Rioja, the business of wine, has eaten away a good chunk of La Rioja, its traditions and genuine family winemaking customs but Abeica has managed to remain unabashedly immune.

The orography and the village’s peculiarities -a considerable part of the farming land was owned by one noble family until the 1980s- meant that land consolidation was avoided and the area is home to some of the best Tempranillos in Rioja. The Eguíluz family owns 12 hectares of vineyards in Ábalos and purchases grapes solely from growers in the Sonsierra to reach 30 hectares, mostly from the villages of Ábalos, Samaniego and San Vicente de la Sonsierra. These vineyards are personally supervised by Bodegas Eguíluz to ensure the excellent quality of the grapes.

Bodegas y Viñedos Eguíluz was born in 1982, but the family traces back its winegrowing roots to several generations before. Javier, the father, has spent a lifetime working in the vineyards. First with two of his brothers, with whom he built the winery, and now with his wife and son, who help him with the management. It’s a family business through and through: Javier takes care of the vineyards, his wife Blanca handles the exacting paperwork and admin tasks on a part-time basis and their son Israel is in charge of winemaking, sales and distribution. “I graduated as an Industrial Engineer but I knew that my heart was in wine, so when I finished my degree I took an Oenology course in the evenings. I now combine my studies with making the wines here”, he explains.

The Crianza and Reserva wines of Bodegas y Viñedos Eguíluz are made in open concrete lagos or wine presses and aged in barrels in a small cellar. The family’s efforts are focused on this front as they get increasing praise for these wines, but as Israel points out, “the young carbonic maceration is our flagship wine”. This style of wine, fermented with whole clusters, is traditional in the Sonsierra.

Eguíluz is a special, artisan wine, made with the best part of the lago; grapes are treaded by hand (or rather with the feet) as it was done hundreds of years ago: each concrete vat is filled with 25,000 kg of grapes to produce around 17,000 litres of wine. For his bottles, Israel exclusively selects vino de repiso —the top quality wine in the lago—, around 8,000 litres in each lago, discarding the free-run juice and the pressed wine. The result is an easy-drinking, round fruity wine with moderate alcohol which tends to ‘evaporate’ once it’s been opened. In fact, of the 300,000 kg produced at Bodegas y Viñedos Eguíluz annually, only 200,000 litres are selected to be bottled and sold under its brand.