![\"\"](\"http:\/\/www.independentfamilywineries.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/lauwa.jpg\")
<\/p>\nValverde is a small village in south-eastern Rioja, where the borders of four autonomous communities meet: La Rioja, Navarra, Arag\u00f3n and Castilla-Le\u00f3n. It is also a threshold area for vine growing, one of the most remote regions of the DOCa Rioja, where Bodegas Lauwa, an acronym for Laura and Wandert, crafts day by day a beautiful love story between two scientists. <\/p>\n
Wandert and Laura met in Groningen (Holland). The Dutchman worked as a researcher in neuroscience and molecular biology while Laura was there with an Erasmus scholarship: “A crush like this is something that happens once in a lifetime, so I didn’t hesitate and in 2014 I dropped everything to come to Spain,\u201d remembers Wandert. He started working with his partner at Bilbao Technology Park in different research areas, but his father-in-law, Alfredo Bozal, a winegrower from Valverde, had already lit the fuse: “He made wine to drink at home and, as a molecular biologist, I was very intrigued by the process, so, although I didn’t have much experience in wine, we began to study and we got hooked.\u201d<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
After several artisanal attempts, Wandert and Laura built a small winery of about 80 m\u00b2: “I thought it was now or never…; at first my family and friends asked me if I was really sure to leave a stable job in the Netherlands, but my grandmother and my mother encouraged me to follow my heart and my father, who is a wine fanatic, is delighted that I am a winegrower and producer.\u201d <\/p>\n
Wandert bought a vineyard as soon as he arrived in Valverde and, together with some of his father-in-law’s crop, they make three wines named Lauwa: a young red Tempranillo, a Vendimia Seleccionada which spends six months ageing in French oak barrels and a Tempranillo Blanco: “Wines are fermented wild, with no added commercial yeasts and we farm the vines trying to manage nature as best we can, but without altering it.\u201d<\/p>\n
Lauwa sells most of its production to Dutch restaurants, but is expanding its distribution nationwide. Of course, you can always discover his wines if you visit the winery, set in a designated rural Biosphere Reserve area: “Yes, we do wine tourism, in the vineyard; we love to share our dream with others,” Wandert says.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Valverde is a small village in south-eastern Rioja, where the borders of four autonomous communities meet: La Rioja, Navarra, Arag\u00f3n and Castilla-Le\u00f3n. It is also a threshold area for vine [\u2026]<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":394,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[17],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-406","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-wineries"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/independentfamilywineries.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/406","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/independentfamilywineries.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/independentfamilywineries.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/independentfamilywineries.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/independentfamilywineries.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=406"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/independentfamilywineries.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/406\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":407,"href":"https:\/\/independentfamilywineries.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/406\/revisions\/407"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/independentfamilywineries.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/394"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/independentfamilywineries.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=406"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/independentfamilywineries.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=406"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/independentfamilywineries.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=406"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}