Bob - Rodríguez is an interesting guy. Like Alvaro Palacios, his is from Rioja initially but had to make his reputation elsewhere before returning to the family business. Back when he started out on his own, Rodríguez didn’t have a lot of money so he focused on finding co-ops and making fairly inexpensive wine that could generate some cash flow. Navarra is close to Rioja and there was a lot of Garnacha there so he made a pretty decent wine from it that wasn’t too expensive. That faltered after a while - the reasons vary depending on who you talk to. Then he went to Rueda and subsequently to a few other places. Right now he’s making wine all over Spain from many different grapes.
His early wines were focused on the export market - it was the 1990s, Parker was discovering Spain and learning that pretty good wine could be made there, and Americans were happy to pay low prices for pretty decent wine. That combination of factors had a profound effect on the wines of Spain for a while.
The image of Spain in the US and even Europe consisted mainly of Rioja - very few people in the US had heard of any other regions (and still haven’t), and most of the wine from Rioja was made by large producers, again for the export market. Stylistically the tradition there for the past three or four generations had been early picking, short maceration, and long aging in American oak, generally used oak. They thought that big, dark wines were kind of rustic as opposed to their own elegant wines, which is how some other European countries seem to view the wines from their southern or hotter areas as well.
So there was a movement in Rioja to make wines that conformed to the new, international preferences but at the same time, there was also a movement to make wines that were site-specific, rather than blends of large areas.
Some people, predominantly American critics, didn’t know any better and started complaining that the “traditions” were dying out. In fact, there was an explosion of new bodegas - a lot of wineries were created in Spain in the 1990s and 2000s. Rodríguez was part of that.
But things have evolved rapidly. There are now wines from Spain that rival the cost of anything from France. Confident that they can make “critic-friendly” wines, a lot of producers have decided not to compete in that space. I think some of the Miller issues had something to do with that as well.
Part of the explosion of bodegas comes from the fact that many growers decided to leave their local co-ops and make their own wine. They had nothing to distinguish them from their neighbors except their land, and people like Rodríguez have increasingly focused on that. His concern these days is the site and the vineyard.
He’s been back at Remelluri since around 2009 or 2010, and he’s changed those wines. The company used to blend their own grapes with the grapes from two adjoining villages. He stopped doing that and now uses only the estate grapes for the flagship Remelluri. He bottles the wines from the villages under their village names, showcasing their differences. That’s something new - he’s been pushing for changes to the Rioja labeling rules for years now. His decision to focus on the villages and the vineyards is not addressed under the current rules so he just did it on his own.
Today he’s making wines from old vineyards that he’s found in something like a dozen different regions. I havent’ tried all of them each vintage, but I’ve had quite a few and some of them are very reasonably priced.
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