La Rioja Alta invests 9million euros in harvest innovation
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La Rioja Alta. S.A. has invested 9 million euros in 62 hectares of new vineyards and innovative harvest facilities.
Known for defining the traditional oak-aged style of Rioja, whilst using modern technology, the investment includes two new, double optical grape entry lines with state-of-the-art optical sorting tables.
La Rioja Alta, who are celebrating their 125th anniversary this year, have also acquired 62 hectares of new vineyards located in three terroirs in the municipality of Cenicero, La Rioja. This brings the surface area in production up to 425 hectares.
The new vineyards have been planted with Tempranillo vines that are an average age of 23 years old.
The new facilities that have been invested in, which will be used during this year’s harvest, will analyse each berry, discarding those that do not comply with the winery’s quality parameters.
Part of the investment is in new Quality and Winemaking Laboratories, allowing for new instrumental methods and testing techniques, such as gas chromatography.
This will help control production of undesirable compounds that significantly affect the quality of the wines during all stages of winemaking.
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La Rioja Alta believe these new investments will improve the quality of their wines.
The Gran Reserva 890 2004 was launched earlier this month and is La Rioja Alta’s flagship wine.
Read more about Rioja terroir with this week’s Anson on Thursday.
Hannah Seaton is a skilled copywriter who has been published in Decanter, Food&Wine, The Debrief, Country Living, Londonist, Suitcase, The Culture Trip, The Londonist, Countryfile, Postgraduate Search, The Global Panorama and Wales Online.
She worked at Decanter as editorial assistant from 2014 to 2015, during this time she set up Decanter’s Instagram account and wrote for both the website and magazine.