Bodegas Lopez de Heredia

Bodegas Lopez de Heredia

Haro, Rioja

If this magically time-warped bodega did not already exist in today’s winemaking world it would never be invented. The art of controlled oxidative winemaking on this scale has all but vanished in the face of technology and temperature control and a whole style of wine would be lost with it were it not for the stubborn resistance to change that is courageously, and most successfully perpetuated by ultra-traditionalists of this type, a rare, indeed almost extinct breed. One gets the impression that virtually nothing has changed in winemaking technique since the bodega was first established in 1877 by Rafael Lopez de Heredia y Landeta from Santiago in Chile. Their wines today are a glowing tribute to the virtues of patience, tradition and family loyalty, driven not as one might suppose by some sleepy, out of touch dinosaurs, but by the dynamism of the great-grand daughters of the founder, Mercedes and Maria-José Lopez de Heredia. The contrast of their vitality and charm with the cobwebs of the cavernous old cellars never ceases to surprise those who visit and the impression left is always indelible, often one of sheer astonishment, so refreshing and refined is the character of the old gran reservas that mature here. Most graduates of modern wine schools would simply be left scratching their heads in disbelief.

Consumers whose experience of wine has been restricted to drinking young fruity wines that are usually little more than facile expressions of a single grape variety may initially be taken aback by wines that display such a different character as these products of extended barrel ageing. Paradoxically, the long time spent in wood results in wines that taste much less of oak than younger wines that may have spent only 12 months in a new oak cask. In any case the result here is much sweeter than that of the more brutally obvious oak flavours that so frequently overpower the fruit of many modern wines. Lopez de Heredia wines are an object lesson in the harmonious relationship that can be achieved between wine and wood when it is done with experience. It is indeed an expertise of a very special sort that is practised to perfection at this bodega and no great private wine cellar or good restaurant list should ignore them.

Photos “©Archive Bodegas López de Heredia Viña Tondonia”