Olivier Rivière

Olivier Rivière grew up in Cognac, studied oenology in Montagne-Saint-Émilion and learned biodynamic viticulture with Elian Da Ros, in Côtes-du-Marmandais, and at Domaine Leroy in Burgundy. He had a plan to buy vines in Fitou when, in 2004, Telmo Rodríguez offered him a move to Rioja to convert his vineyards to biodynamics. He accepted, and stayed.

In 2006 he started on his own. With no money to buy land in Rioja, he traded his vineyard work for access to grapes from good sites: a grower in Cárdenas, in the Alto Najerilla, and a rented plot of 1.2 hectares. Today he works owned and rented plots in all three zones of Rioja and in DO Arlanza, in Burgos, where he found high-altitude Tempranillo, some of it very old, interplanted with Garnacha and Albillo. All farmed biodynamically.

He ranks his wines the Burgundian way, by site, and dispenses with the crianza, reserva and gran reserva ladder. Ganko, his red from 40- to 80-year-old vines near Cárdenas at around 600 metres, owes its name to his Japanese importer: it means "stubborn". Gabaxo is gabacho, the local nickname for the French, which he put on the label himself.

Gabaxo brings together Tempranillo from Laguardia, Navaridas, Leza and Páganos with Garnacha from Aldeanueva de Ebro and Cárdenas. Part of the fruit goes in as whole clusters and the Aldeanueva fruit destemmed; it ages eleven months in used 500-litre barrels and three in foudres, unfined and unfiltered.