Remelluri Rioja Reserva 2018

More about Remelluri

The history of Remelluri stretches back into the 14th century when monks from the Toloño monastery founded a sanctuary and farm at the site. The winery we know today was established in 1967 when Jaime Rodríguez Salis purchased the vineyards at the heart of the former property. Since then Remelluri has been devoted to recovering the old lands of this historic site and restoring the original vineyards.

Remelluri’s vineyards are located along the slopes of the Sierra de Toloño mountains in the valleys of Valderemelluri, La Granja, and Villaescusa in Rioja Alavesa. The vineyards here are at the highest elevation in the region, south-facing and protected from the prevailing winds and frost. It is the unique microclimate coupled with the high level of calcareous soil that gives the wines their personality, pedigree, and propensity for aging.

Remelluri holds a privileged position in Rioja as the winery that set the path for bringing Rioja out of its mid century doldrum. Maintaining a foot in the past while pushing the boundaries of modernization, the Rodriguez family eschewed chemicals for ancient farming methods including a recent adoption of biodynamics.

In 2010, Jaime’s son and daughter, Telmo and Amaia Rodríguez, took the reins of the estate and set about making a series of changes to showcase the potential and diversity of Remellur’s different terroirs, and ultimately reclaim Rioja’s viticultural history. The first major change was to cut down the production of Remelluri wines by one third, restricting it to wines produced from the estate’s own grapes. The two wines made from grapes grown in the surrounding villages are now sold under the label ‘Las Lindes de Remelluri’, and are identified each by their village of origin: Labastida and San Vicente de la Sonsierra.

As a nod to Rioja’s historic viticultural traditions, they have begun moving the Garnacha from trellis to bush-grown vines and will be working increasingly with mixed field plantings. Although Remelluri has always eschewed chemical treatments in the vineyard, 2010 marked the year of the estate’s full organic certification. Work in the winery plays a secondary role in Telmo’s philosophy, but great care is taken to make sure that each bottle reflects the terruño of the region: wines are fermented with native yeasts, each plot is vinified separately, new oak is used very scarcely and the wines are very lightly filtered and fined.