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La Rioja Alta Winery Guide

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Winery Overview

There probably isn’t a Rioja lover alive today who hasn’t heard of La Rioja Alta, the region’s most “fiercely traditional and proud of it” winery in Haro’s historic Barrio de la Estacion (station quarter). Among other things, it is responsible for the universally recognized and much-loved Viña Ardanza brand, a wine that remains astonishingly good value and remarkably consistent, despite the vintage variations.

La Rioja Alta has been in the business for over 125 years, founded in 1890 by five canny investors who agreed to pool resources and provide vineyards, land, and capital for the fledgling project; in the wake of the phylloxera epidemic that had devastated French vineyards, these pioneers saw a lucrative opportunity to supply wine to the eager palates of Paris and beyond. Hiring French oenologist Albert Vigier was their first good move, and they purchased oak barrels from Bordeaux.

After just a decade, the estate earned a formidable reputation for the quality of its wines. It was boosted when one of the founding fathers, Daniel Alfredo Ardanza y Sánchez, merged his own Ardanza winery with La Rioja Alta in 1904. Today, this pioneering and brave move is commemorated with the flagship Gran Reserva 904 brand, a wine not released until some ten years after the harvest. However, its twin, Gran Reserva 890, is undoubtedly one of the region’s most outstanding wines – complex, velvety, rich, and long-lived.

Indeed, this practice of releasing wines when they are ready to drink, incorporating long aging regimes in barrels and the bottle, is a rarity today, earning La Rioja Alta the perhaps deserved title of “staunch traditionalist.” Yet this iconic winery is no stick-in-the-mud either. On the contrary, since the 1970s, they have refined and modernized their approach without sacrificing the founding members’ original vision.

For a start, La Rioja Alta switched its reliance from bought-in grapes to estate vineyards, expanded its presence to other regions, and moved to new premises in Labastida in 1996. Moreover, the current range of wines varies enormously; some are decidedly modern in style. The fruit-driven, concentrated, and deeply colored Viña Alberdi is a testament to that.

But despite these concessions to modernity, La Rioja Alta remains a family-run enterprise, still run by the descendants of the founding families. The current chairman, Guillermo de Aranzabal, is the fifth generation of his family to work in the business, and his children will undoubtedly take their place in the future. This family spirit and devotion to excellence ensure that La Rioja Alta has no equal. Even today, the family welcomes visitors to this historic bodega.

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Further Reading

Author

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James Lawrence

With a passion for food & drink that verges on the obsessive, wine writer James Lawrence has traveled the world in search of the perfect tipple. To date, nothing has surpassed the 1952 R. Lopez de Heredia Vina Tondonia Rioja Reserva, tasted in the cobweb-filled cellars with owner María José. Meanwhile, James has been writing for a wide variety of publications for over 12 years, including Telegraph, Decanter, Harpers, The Drinks Business, and Wine Business International. He lives in South Wales and returns to his former university city, Bilbao, as much as possible.

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