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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.

This wine is made from Tempranillo grapes selected from low-yielding, dry-farmed old vines planted in 1974 in plots around the village of Laguardia in Rioja Alavesa. Old vines are important because as vines get older, they become less fertile. So, you have more plant and less production, resulting in better quality fruit.

Tempranillo is now the most common grape in Spain. Covering over 202,000 hectares - about one-fifth of all Spain’s vineyards. The name Tempranillo comes from the Spanish word temprano, which means "early". That’s because Tempranillo ripens early and has a shorter growing cycle than many other grapes.

Wines made from Tempranillo don’t tend to be too high in alcohol, which makes them relatively easy to drink and to pair with different foods. Tempranillo often have aromas like strawberries and other red fruits, and you can detect spice, leather and tobacco leaves. But the end result is as much down to the skill of the winemaker as it is to the grape variety itself.

MacRobert & Canals is a small, family-run winery with its cellar in Logroño and vineyards scattered across the region. The winemaking is handled by young South African Bryan MacRobert who was born in Cape Town, grew up in a winemaking family in Swartland, and studied Viticulture and Enology at the University of Stellenbosch.

Now firmly established in Rioja, he is part of the new generation of winemakers in the region who are moving away from barrel-ageing as the defining characteristic of their wines, and instead looking to make fresher, more elegant wines which better reflect the essence of the traditional grapes grown in the region. In his own words, he “prioritises the vineyard over the cellar” and strives to make high quality wines with a strong sense of place that really showcase the diversity of soils, climates, vineyards and grape varieties that exist within Rioja.

The vineyards are traditional Riojan vineyards, which means they were planted many years ago – most more than 70 years ago in fact – often on quite steep, hard to access plots which makes it tricky to use machines, so the land is usually worked manually and with mules.

The focus in the vineyard is very much on sustainable agriculture, which means no herbicides or pesticides and clever use of plant cover which keeps erosion to a minimum and helps boost the organic matter in the soil.

Bryan’s aim with this wine is to show Riojan Tempranillo’s potential without a heavy reliance on oak, which can sometimes mask the natural qualities of the grape. The wine is fermented in concrete tanks and then aged for one year in large oak barrels with the aim of giving just enough interaction to allow the wine to evolve without letting the wood dominate.