Remelluri Lindes de Remelluri Rioja 'Vinedos de San Vincente' 2013

When Telmo took over Remelluri in 2009 he found that his dad had increasingly been buying wines from the villages either side of Remelluri Estate (Labastida on the western 'linde' or side of Remelluri, on the track to Haro, and San Vicente on the eastern 'linde', the boundary towards Logroño). Telmo immediately culled the grower fruit, but instead of simply cancelling their contracts, and leaving the villagers without income, he decided to make a grower's wine from the villages either side of the estate. Not only did he honour the contracts in 2009, being such a committed historian and cultural conservator, Telmo decided the little village project they had accidentally made as a one-off was in fact a really worthwhile alternate interpretation and expression of Rioja, and he has continued to make the Lindes de Remelluri grower-village wines since (with ongoing improvement in what are now delicious, interesting and very good value wines.

The two villages are just 5 km apart on a small country road, the A-124 from Haro to Logroño which winds just under the mountains above the north shore of the Ebro. Labastida and San Vicente offer quite different terroir expressions, with no winemaking to influence the differences. It's a very cool project. Labastida is soft, sweet and delicate with good energy and nice lines - a cool-soils wine with juicy inky-blue fruits. San Vicente has a warmer aspect and richer ferrous red soils, and although high under the Cantabrica range, it's a village suited to Garnacha as well as Tempranillo. Lindes de San Vicente is a notably more earthy wine, with foursquare tannins, nicely blocky compared to the slink of Labastida.

Country: Spain
Producer: Remelluri
Region: Rioja