Contino

Viñedos del Contino was founded in 1973 as Rioja's first single-estate winery, a château in the Bordeaux sense. Rumasa was trying to buy the San Rafael estate in Laserna (Laguardia), and its owners, Ricardo Pérez Calvet and his son Ricardo Pérez Villota, went into a 50/50 partnership with CVNE to make wine only from the grapes of that estate. The first Reserva was the 1974; the first single-varietal Graciano came in 1994 and the Gran Reserva in 1996.

The estate sits on a meander of the Ebro in Rioja Alavesa: 62 hectares of vines around a manor house some two hundred years old, with sixteenth-century cellars among the oldest in the region. The name comes from a court office: a contino was one of the hundred soldiers who guarded the royal family.

Viña del Olivo is a plot of about six hectares within the estate, south-facing, on calcareous clay with a very high active-limestone content and limestone pebbles, unlike the alluvial soils that dominate the rest. The vines, planted in 1980, are dry-farmed without herbicides, and rows of Garnacha are interplanted among the old Tempranillo. It takes its name from the centuries-old olive tree that presides over the terrace; the first vintage was 1995.

Fermentation is spontaneous in 100-hectolitre French oak vats and the ageing, around 17 months, combines French and American oak before a spell in foudres. In 2013, after forty years, the Pérez Villota family left the partnership to bottle on their own under the Villota brand; Contino stayed within the CVNE group.