A Glass With: Telmo Rodríguez

(L) Telmo and his business partner Pablo Eguzkiza, (R) The landscape of Rioja from Bodega Lanzaga [photo credit: Jason Orton]

You grew up in Rioja at your family estate but chose to study in Bordeaux. Do you think that international experience has informed your approach since returning to Spain?

For 300 years, France had the monopoly on fine wine and fine dining. Spanish chefs would travel to France to train, and the same was true for wine. If you wanted to make fine wine, you had to go to France. It was where all the inspiration and innovation were happening, and where modern oenology was born. In Rioja, all the most important innovations in wine since the 17th century had come from Bordeaux. So, going to France to study winemaking was the natural thing to do.

I was very lucky because my parents were not wine people. They were very sensitive, special people who found our family property in Rioja and brought it back to life. I saw them do that my whole life, bringing out the potential of this old estate, because if something is exceptional, you must restore its beauty. Since they weren’t wine people, they could focus on the land, and that has become my job.

From Bordeaux, I then went to the Rhône Valley, because I felt that people there were working in a similar way to how I wanted to work in Rioja. I wanted to meet people who fought for their vineyards. It was the same in the south of France, where I worked with people like Éloi Dürrbach at Domaine de Trévallon for three vintages (1990–1992), who fought for the future of Provençal wines. In the end, I realised that when I came back to Spain, I was preparing to fight for the same, and I’ve been fighting for 30 years.

(L) The vineyards of Bodega Lanzaga [photo credit: Jason Orton]

What made you decide to break with the traditions of Rioja at the time?

I didn’t break tradition; I returned to tradition. It was those before me who had broken it, and I instead started to look back to the 17th and 18th centuries to restore Rioja.

The ones who destroy buildings are not traditionalists; they are people who don’t understand tradition. I think Lanzaga is the most traditional project ever done in Rioja because of this.

That reminds me of a Luis Gutiérrez quote about Spanish wine in “The New Vignerons”, where he talks about the future of Spanish wine being in its past.

You know, Luis borrowed that quote from me. He asked if he could use it, of course, but that has always been my motto: the future is in the past.

A big part of how you have innovated in Rioja, by returning to tradition, has been with your vineyards. Could you talk us through these sites and this approach?

In the beginning, Lanzaga was a challenge to recuperate the idea of villages. In the 17th century, Rioja as a wine region had much of its identity in village culture. Two of our vineyards are in Labastida, and in 1670 there were 300 growers in the village and 256 underground cellars. In every wine village of Rioja, the neighbourhood was defined by its cellars. This is why I say that “I am the 17th century,” because this is what we are trying to return to: wine as part of local cultural identity. Recovering and restoring old vineyards was as much about recuperating the village identity of 'Las Beatas', 'Tabuerniga' or 'La Estrada' as it was about preserving the land.

I don’t feel very original, because I was just doing what many other regions in the wine world had already done. As with Burgundy and the Mosel, it created a hierarchy of quality. When you talk about single vineyards and villages, this is how every sommelier, wine lover and collector can relate to quality.

The talent of a wine is not in the winery, the brand or the winemaker, it is in the origin of the wine. That origin is a place, a vineyard. Vineyards are like people. There’s a reason why people like David Bowie or Miles Davis are so influential and successful, but their siblings perhaps aren’t. They come from the same place and the same parents, but the talent of Bowie or Miles is one in a million. Talent is something very rare, and a vineyard, a very good vineyard, is very rare.

We have to recognise that talent in vineyards, to take care and nurture it to achieve greatness. There are a lot of beautiful places in Spain, and they all have something to say.

The vineyards of Pegaso [photo credit: Jason Orton]

We work with several of your projects, and Pegaso is one that seems especially topical given how Sierra de Gredos has flourished in the last decade. Yet you started making wine there in the 1990s. What was it then that captivated you about the area? Did you recognise what it would become today?

In the 1990s, Garnacha was being criticised a lot in Spain because at that time international varieties were popular. Garnacha is a very Spanish variety, even though it is widely planted in other countries. It’s versatile and rustic, and even in difficult climates it creates wines that are expressive and fresh. For me, a grape variety is an antenna: it signals what a place is. It tells you where it’s from. I like the idea that our ancestors planted grapes because they knew which ones best expressed the sense of place.

I first learnt about Garnacha in the south of France, in Châteauneuf-du-Pape, tasting wines like Château Rayas. In that region Grenache was celebrated, but in Spain Garnacha was not. Before I even came to Sierra de Gredos, I began my career making Garnacha in Navarra. So, it was a variety I loved and one I knew there was work to be done with.

I am very proud to have been something of a pioneer in Sierra de Gredos, in that I went there before so many others did. But there was also Dani Landi and Fernando García (of Comando G, founded in 2008), and their families, Bodega Marañones and Bodegas Jiménez-Landi, there before too. I am very proud of what they have achieved. You know, Fernando worked with us, and I think that ties into something important about these projects: they can welcome young people in, to have an opportunity to learn and grow.

You can’t revitalise a region alone. I think it’s very important to have the younger generation come in. In that sense, I think Pegaso might be one of my most successful projects, because it achieved this, helping bring more people to an area that I saw potential in.

When I came across Sierra de Gredos, I was following the Cañada Real route and was very impressed by the shape of the Garnacha bush vines in the area. So, I decided to make wine in a place that nobody knew. Imagine, it was only an hour’s drive from Madrid, but no sommelier in the city had ever heard of Sierra de Gredos or Cebreros. That’s not the case today. The soils there are beautiful, granite and slate, and the vineyards are mountainous and difficult to work. It felt so promising.

I am very proud to have been part of reviving a region that today is full of young people. That is the future of Spanish wine: regions with good vineyards and young, excited people fighting to preserve them and their traditions.

What’s especially exciting is seeing how much impact you have already had with this. For example, Fernando Garcia worked with you and then co-founded Comando G, where Álvar de Dios Hernández worked before starting his own project in Toro. We came across Álvar through Javi Revert, who has been similarly impacted by your work and the Futuro Viñador. It’s all connected.

I am like a bridge between a very boring generation of producers and wineries managed by business managers rather than people with a passion for wine. They could’ve been growing anything; it could’ve been apricots, it was just business.

But I am part of a generation with people like Álvaro Palacios, Peter Sisseck and José María Vicente (Casa Castillo). We are from the 1960s, and collectively we were of a moment that started a movement in a very natural way. Several of us went to work in France; we experienced other great wines. We learnt from them. You want to produce great wine? You must be in contact with great wine. We were the bridge.

But for me, I think the new generation is even more important. They continue this work, they work hard, and they are the future of Spanish wine.

(L) Javi Revert of Finca Sandoval and (R) Álvar de Dios Hernández have both been impacted by Telmo's work.

This feels like a good time to talk about Futuro Viñador, which several of our producers are either members of (Celler del Roure, Adega Algueira, Casa Castillo and Raventós i Blanc) or admirers of the manifesto. Could you talk us through how this movement was founded and its goals?

It started with a meeting that I organised in Madrid. It was a brainstorming session about the great vineyards of Spain. I brought together producers, journalists and merchants, and it was something magical. In fact, we did a tasting afterwards of Sierra de Gredos!

And from this meeting we created the Manifesto Matador [which stated that "the best way to identify [Spanish wines] in relation to their origin, quality, identity and authenticity is to create a pyramid structure. At its base would be wines made from grapes from any place in appellations of origin, then wines from villages and, at the tip of the pyramid, wines from single plots."]. In that one day, all the energy among these people, it was a volcano that exploded. They wanted to do something.

From there it went crazy. The manifesto spread across the world and was published in many places. After that we decided to do something similar, specifically in Rioja: Encuentro de Viticultura, an “encounter of viticultures”, where 160 producers came together for meetings and talks. It was magical, because it was the first time all of us growers came together as friends. Until then, in Spain, another grower was an enemy, because of this idea that if they sold wine, you couldn’t sell wine. It was very disappointing.

These meetings started the Futuro Viñador movement. We want to welcome all good, like-minded producers in Spain to Futuro Viñador, because that is how we build a better Spanish wine industry where vineyards are the priority. We want to celebrate the beauty of our country and save much of the landscape. It sends a message to the Consejo Regulador: the trade of quality has arrived, and you need to decide if you want to join us.

The members of Futuro Viñador (including Celler del Roure, Adega Algueira, Casa Castillo and Raventós i Blanc) and their book on best practices.

Challenging the Consejo Regulador brings us back to Lanzaga and something interesting about your labels. You originally labelled these as village wines, but because of Consejo Regulador Rioja rules, you had to black this out. It’s a powerful message that you did this instead of simply redesigning the label to fully conform to the rules.

For me, the most important thing is that I want to produce great wines. I don't want to waste time with administration. I think the people running the Consejo Regulador are not talented. They are completely disconnected; they don’t have passion for wine. They should find new people to run the Consejo. Today, the best appellations are those led by young people. In Priorat and Bierzo, for example, they are doing much more than appellations run by dinosaurs. Here, they think that Rioja is amazing, “we did this, we did that”, but it’s boring and it’s over! It doesn’t work anymore.

I wish that the big producers would understand that this is also important for them. Look at the Grower Champagne movement. At the start, big producers were very critical of it, but in the end, it was the most important thing to ever happen in Champagne. Now the big producers are becoming more interested in their vineyards and preserving the region. They spotlight the 1er Cru and Grand Cru villages and emphasise their importance.

I don’t care if someone is producing 20 million bottles of Rioja that I will never drink, what I care about is that these producers care about the vineyards, the villages, the growers. Today, Rioja is in crisis because they haven’t done this, and we need to work together to preserve the region’s viticultural heritage. But to do that, the Consejo Regulador needs to change.

You said before that you have been fighting for 30 years, do you think you have made progress?

Yes, I think so. It has been a long fight, and in the beginning, I started with very little, not a lot of vines and not a lot of money, and some of my contemporaries found it funny how I worked because it was not usual. But I always knew I was preparing for the future; I knew what I wanted to achieve. And today we have many beautiful vineyards across the projects, and it has been a lot of fun getting here.

Throughout my career, even though I’ve been fighting, I’ve also had a lot of fun. I’ve been to amazing places, met wonderful and funny people, people with deep knowledge of the areas, telling me to buy certain vineyards and showing me the right places. It was amazing to spend time with people from all these different regions.

So, I can’t complain. Even if it wasn’t always easy, I am proud of what has been achieved. Today, I am very happy because I know we are making very good, Spanish wines that show their heritage and the talent of their vineyards.

For more information about purchasing Bodega Lanzaga, Pegaso, Molino Real or Al-Muvedre, please contact your Account Manager. Not yet a customer? Contact Us to discuss opening an account.