Secreto del Abuelo 2020 | Peña de la Rosa | Rioja

The vines came before the winery. Pilar and Carmelo's grandparents were already farming in Ábalos, and in 1989 Julián Fernández Garrido founded Bodegas Julián Fernández Garrido, the origin of today's Bodega Fernández Eguíluz. His children run it now: Pilar takes care of the winery and sales, and Carmelo of the vineyards.

The vineyards lie in the middle and upper part of Ábalos, in Rioja's Sonsierra, between 500 and 600 metres, mostly on clay-limestone soils. They are small, old plots with names of their own: Romalache, with vines over 90 years old on sand and slabs of slate, and El Cuadro, with 100-year-old vines.

Peña La Rosa is the reference wine and is made by carbonic maceration, in young red and white versions. Secreto del Abuelo starts from old-vine Tempranillo, destemmed and given a long maceration, and ages in American and French oak barrels.

The La Cantarada range began in 2014 and gathers single-plot microvinifications in runs of a few hundred bottles. The name comes from a local tradition: a cantarada was a measure of about 16 litres, and “de las Mozas” refers to what young men had to pay in wine to the local lads in order to court a girl from another village. That is why the whites are called “de las Mozas” and the reds “de los Mozos”. San Prudencio, from the 2018 vintage on, comes from a vineyard planted by the grandfather: 70% Tempranillo and 30% Viura vinified together, aged in 340-litre French oak barrels, in about 400 bottles per vintage.