Single-vineyard Rioja – is the new category working?

Bodegas Lecea’s deep underground cellars in San Asensio are some of the most beautiful in Rioja, popular with wine-loving tourists in search of good reds, a friendly family welcome and a brush with the past. Some of the concrete tanks in these cool galleries date back to the 1890s.

Look closer and they bear the names of different vineyard parcels – Campillo, Cofrades, Peña La Cueva – a throwback to a time when Rioja had more in common with site-specific Burgundy than catch-all Champagne, a time before pan-regional blends became the norm.

Scroll down for Tim Atkin’s top single-vineyard white and red wines from Rioja

The old timers knew where their best grapes came from, and not just in San Asensio. Riojans have always acknowledged the primacy of certain plots and villages, even when they blended them, and most still do today.

The crazy thing is that, until recently, it was illegal to include vineyard names on labels, unless they were registered as brands.

Imagine a world in which Domaine de la Romanée-Conti couldn’t sell La Tâche, or Roberto Conterno was banned from using the words ‘Cascina Francia’ in Barolo. Well, that was the law as laid down by the ruling consejo regulador body in Rioja.

Not before time, Spain’s most famous wine region has begun to remedy this ludicrous situation. In June 2017, the consejo regulador announced that it was introducing a tier of single-vineyard wines, called Viñedos Singulares, and that applications were open to any producer whose wines and vineyards met the required criteria, starting with the 2017 vintage.

Reaction & recognition

In part, this was a response to the well-publicised decision of Artadi’s Juan Carlos López de Lacalle to leave the Denominación de Origen Calificada (DOCa) in January 2016, taking a handful of Rioja’s most famous single-vineyard wines with him, and to the ongoing threat by the Basque Asociación de Bodegas de Rioja Alavesa (ABRA) to set up its own Viñedos de Alava appellation.

But it was also a recognition of what consumers, especially high-end ones, increasingly want from a wine: personality, authenticity and a sense of place.

The Viñedos Singulares are a reflection of a horse-already-bolted reality, in some senses. Several top producers were already flouting the rules by using the words ‘single vineyard’, ‘viñedos propios’ or even ‘vinos singulares’ on their labels, as well as the names of individual parcels that aren’t, strictly speaking, brands.

It’s possible that these producers will be forced to withdraw such descriptions in the future, but don’t hold your breath. The fallout would be considerable.

Despite fears to the contrary, and whatever one may think of the wines chosen so far, the process for approving these new Viñedos Singulares has been commendably serious. It took more than two years for Spain’s ministry of agriculture to publish the first list of 84 vineyards on 30 July 2019. Since then, the number has swelled to 103, with a further 22 under consideration. These 125 sites are owned by 94 growers or bodegas, totalling only 207.68ha.

Singular standards

What makes a Viñedo Singular? In the official jargon, they are defined as ‘minor geographical units that can comprise a single or several cadastral plots’.

Permitted yields are 20% lower than for the rest of the DOCa, the vineyard must be at least 35 years old (younger parcels within it, or even replaced vines, invite disqualification) and must have been owned or rented by the same person for a decade or more.

The extensive dossier for each vineyard has to make a case for its unique qualities. Disappointingly, but understandably given the politics of the region, bush vines and clay-limestone soils are not mandatory.

Official approval of the site is only one part of the process. The wine it produces then has to pass through two tastings by a panel of six tasters appointed by the consejo regulador, once after fermentation and again before the wine is released.

To qualify, a wine has to score 93 points or more on the OIV system. So far, after seven official tastings, 34 wines from 20 wineries have been given the nod, covering the 2017, 2018 and 2019 vintages; 14 wines were rejected.

The anointed 34 wines are from:

• Berta Valgañón García (one wine)
• Bodegas Javier San Pedro Ortega (one)
• Bodegas Manzanos (one)
• Bodegas Palacio (two)
• Bodegas Valdemar (one)
• Bodegas y Viñedos Larraz (one)
• Bodegas y Viñedos Tobelos (one)
• Dominio de Berzal (one)
• Dominio de Queirón (one)
• Juan Carlos Sancha (four)
• Luis Cañas (four)
• Marqués de Riscal (one)
• Miguel Martínez Diéz (one)
• Sociedad Cooperativa Amurrio Barroeta (one)
• Sociedad Cooperativa Bodega San Miguel (three)
• Sociedad Cooperativa Bodegas Sonsierra (three)
• Viña del Lentisco (one)
• Viñedos de Alfaro (two)
• Viñedos Planas Altas (two)
• Ysios (two)

Apart from these 20 bodegas, producers with approved vineyards – but not yet wines, in most cases because the producer hasn’t presented any – include Beronia, Bodega 202, Bodegas Bilbaínas, Bodegas Izadi, Castillo de Cuzcurrita, Hermanos Hernáiz, Loli Casado, MacRobert & Canals, Ostatu, Ruiz de Viñaspre and Urbina, while Arizcuren, Nivarius and Proelio are set to join them soon.

These are all serious operations, as are the likes of Bodegas Palacio, Juan Carlos Sancha, Luis Cañas, Marqués de Riscal and Dominio de Berzal among the 94 on the existing list.

A contentious category

The system isn’t perfect by any means. A single vineyard can only be registered by one producer, so if more than one bodega sources grapes from the same cru, they can’t both make Viñedos Singulares, and those that are under 35 years old are ineligible. Quality so far is mixed, ranging from excellent to distinctly ordinary among the 20 samples I tasted for this article.

A much bigger problem is that, with a handful of exceptions – Castillo de Cuzcurrita’s Tilo, Bodegas Valdemar’s Finca Alto Cantabria and Ostatu’s Gloria de Ostatu – the owners of Rioja’s best sites have not applied to join this particular club.

Wines such as Artuke’s La Condenada, Bodega Lanzaga’s Las Beatas, Contino’s Viña del Olivo, Finca Allende’s Calvario, Marqués de Murrieta’s Castillo Ygay, Pujanza’s Norte and Viñedos de Páganos’ La Nieta are all noticeable by their absence.

As Saúl Gil Berzal of Bodegas Gil Berzal points out: ‘The Viñedos Singulares should be the grands crus of Rioja, and they’re not.’

Adding value

So far, none of these bodegas think that the Viñedo Singular category adds value to their wines, although this may change.

Some, such as Benjamín Romeo at Bodega Contador, can’t face the bureaucracy involved – ‘I want to be free,’ he says – while others think that soil type and terroir are far more important criteria and minimum vine age is irrelevant.

‘A bad vineyard is still a bad vineyard,’ says Marcos Eguren at Viñedos de Páganos and Sierra Cantabria, ‘no matter how old it is.’ And a few are waiting to see how the wines are received in the marketplace.

Will they command a premium? ‘If they start selling at €10 a bottle,’ concedes Juan Carlos Sancha, who has already released four Viñedos Singulares, ‘then we’re in trouble.’

For now, the area in question is very small at just 0.31% of Rioja’s 66,239ha, but the hope inside the Rioja consejo regulador is that this will grow to 1% in the next few years.

When the Viñedo Singular category was announced, reactions were mostly critical. Many people felt that the legislation had been rushed through: that it was a case of building a house from the roof down, as they like to say in Spain. Others were considerably ruder.

But 40 months on, opinions are shifting. And, just as it did in the late 19th century, Rioja is talking about terroir again.

Atkin’s dozen: top single-vineyard Rioja white and red wines

Wines 1-6 are ‘Viñedo Singular’, the rest are single-vineyard wines

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