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Rioja is one of Spain’s best known and best-loved wine regions and is on a par with renowned wine-producing regions like Bordeaux and Burgundy in France, or Barolo in northern Italy.

Sitting in the north of Spain, Rioja runs about 100 km from West to East and 40 km North to South, centred around the city of Logroño. The Ebro river runs through it from West to East. Rioja has just over 66,000 hectares of vineyards, which is about 7% of the Spanish total. In that area you'll find about 14,800 farmers who grow grapes which they then sell on to about 574 actual wine producers.

Traditionally, winemaking in Rioja has put a big focus on blending – mixing together grapes grown in different zones of the region to achieve balanced wines. But in recent years, Riojan producers are lobbying for changes to the rules to allow wine labels to include more specific references to where within Rioja the wines actually come from. It’s a move towards the more terroir-focused approach, used in lots of the other great wine regions of the world.

You’ll sometimes see Tempranillo Blanco described as an ¨accidental mutation¨ of Tempranillo, and it’s a native grape of Rioja which only ¨discovered¨ as recently as 1988. It’s had a boost in recent years as winemakers have used it to make new, single varietal white wines, and it now covers 766 hectares across Spain, about 80% of which is in Rioja.

In terms of its flavour profile, Tempranillo Blanco is famously tricky grape to pick out in a blind tasting. The best examples can show concentrated orange and stonefruit characteristics. It can age well.

Juan Carlos Sancha is a man of many parts. An indefatigable researcher and academic, he has taught oenology (the science and study of winemaking) at the University of Rioja for many years. In parallel, through his exhaustive field work he has become the foremost authority in Spain, possibly the world, on minority grape varieties in Rioja.

Juan Carlos’s bodega reflects that obsession with mapping and preserving historic vineyards. Having made wine all over Spain and as far afield as Chile, in 1997 he returned to his native village of Baños de Río Tobía, one of the coolest spots in Rioja in the upper reaches of the Alto Najerilla valley near the Sierra de la Demanda mountain range (Rioja’s southern frontier which separates Spain’s central plateau or meseta from the Ebro river valley). Farming 24 hectares of vineyard, much of which was planted by his great-grandfather, Juan Carlos is dedicated to recovering historic native grape varieties like Maturana Tinta and Maturana Blanca (just 304 hectares and 47 hectares respectively planted in the whole of Spain, mostly in Rioja), Tempranillo Blanco – a white grape native to Rioja which is a genetic mutation of the red variety – or Monastel, a grape so rare it doesn’t even figure on the Ministry of Agriculture’s official list of grapes planted in Spain!

The Tempranillo Blanco grapes used for Ad Libitum are grown in one of the coolest parts of Rioja with cold winters, warm summers and a long, mild autumn. The broad temperature variation between day and night means the grapes ripen slowly which helps the synthesis of polyphenols and allows aromas to develop.

The grapes are harvested manually, usually in the first week of October. Once they have been destemmed, the grapes are put into a small vertical press and the heaviest particles in the must are then allowed to settle manually before undergoing fermentation at a steady 15ºC in stainless steel tanks.