Viticultores de Lapuebla

A small growers' project in Lapuebla de Labarca, Rioja Alavesa, rescuing ancestral vineyards, some planted in 1920, and bottling them parcel by parcel.

Viticultores de Lapuebla is a growers' project based in Lapuebla de Labarca, in the heart of Rioja Alavesa, working old family parcels that sit at around 550 metres on clay-limestone and alluvial soils. Many of the vines were planted between 1940 and 1960 and have been farmed by the same families for generations.

The project is the work of José Luis Heras and Noelia Rodríguez, from the family behind Bodegas Heras Cordón. Each wine is a single-parcel or old-vine bottling that isolates the character of its site: El Propósito, built almost entirely on Tempranillo with a seasoning of Viura, and Galáctico, just 700 bottles of Garnacha planted in 1920 at 700 metres in Alesón.

Harvest is manual, fermentations are patient, and oak is used as seasoning rather than flavouring. The wines carry the tension typical of Alavesa: ripe red fruit held in check by altitude and limestone, with the polish that only genuine old vines bring.