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.

SEE VIDEO: THE NEW WINES FROM RIOJA

This recognition of local, regional wines has always existed, although it has been masked in recent years, and since the beginning of the century, Bodegas Familiares de Rioja has been promoting the distinction of wines based on the location of the vineyards: the plots and estates, the districts and areas, with the specific characteristics of the great and extensive denomination that is La Rioja, the wine region that we like to call the land of a thousand wines.

This summer, the Regulatory Council finally gave a nod to its historic vineyards by approving the new category of ‘Singular Vineyards’, a select club of wines from estates or plots featuring a recognised uniqueness of their own and strict production requirements. Bodegas Familiares pushed for this category, in a decision that we consider to be historic, on a par with securing the status of ‘Certified’ (which prohibited bulk sales and made it compulsory for all wine from La Rioja to be bottled at its place of origin) in 1991, or the approval of new local grape varieties in 2009, which was actually promoted, through research and regeneration, by our association.

The second component approved was the development of local (town) and area wines (Rioja Alta, Rioja Alavesa and Rioja Baja), which have been regulated since 1999 but for which a new direction is sought. In this respect, from now on, on the new La Rioja labels the area and town where the grapes are from may be featured, two new categories which make it possible to know the specific origin of the wine and, above all, to start exploiting geographical diversity.

At Bodegas Familiares de Rioja we would have preferred a clearer commitment to origin, particularly in the case of local wines, which do not follow the same criteria as wines from ‘Singular Vineyards’, since production limits have not been established under the ‘generic’ Rioja brand (up to a maximum of 100% in the field and 70% in the winery as we advocated) and although there is a requirement for the winery to be located in the town in order to make local wines, for us the important element is the vineyard, not the building, as such we will continue to work to try and improve things.

In any case, this new pyramid, at the top of which wines from Singular Vineyards are placed, followed by wines from the municipality, wines from the area and, finally, wines from the La Rioja region, is the first classification based on origin that consumers are going to discover – ­although these wines will reach the market gradually – not only offering them information about the time in the barrel and in the winery, but also the specific origin of the wine because a garnacha from La Sierra de Yerga has nothing in common with one from Najerilla and a tempranillo from Los Obarenes has nothing in common with one from La Sonsierra.

The new categories

1. Singular Vineyards: the vineyard must be at least 35 years old and the maximum acceptable yield is 5000 kilos per hectare for red grapes and 6922 kilos for white grapes (77% of the normal yield of 100%) with 65% being transformed in the winery (usually 70%).
2. Local wines: At least 85% of the grapes must come from the town referred to and the rest from neighbouring towns.
3. Area wines: At least 85% of the grapes must come from the area referred to (Rioja Alta, Rioja Oriental – formerly Baja – and Rioja Alavesa) and the rest from neighbouring areas.