Bodegas Roda is located in northwestern extension of the Rioja region in Barrio de la Estación, at the town of Haro, in the sub-zone of Rioja Alta. This small town on the south bank of the Ebro River is associated with some of the greatest wines of Rioja as well as some of its most venerated bodegas, many dating to the mid-1800s.
Bodegas Roda was founded 1987 by Mario Rottlant and Carmen Daurella, a Catalán couple who met through their business affiliations in gourmet products and wine. Well aware of the significant number of excellent traditional wineries in Rioja, their objective was to create superb, high expression red wines in a modern style reflective of the region and the constituent varietals, yet embodying something unique. The symbol of the thistle, an elegant yet hardy flower closely tied to the landscape and capable of persisting long after being cut, conveys a sense of their vision for the wines.
Rottlant and Daurella focused their research on Bordeaux as a benchmark of technique and quality with the idea of producing wines from estate vineyards. Rottlant consulted vineyardist Felix Alonso and subsequently purchased a 150 acre estate without any plantings. This move in effect put Roda at a risky disadvantage in a region of many properties with old, established vineyards. That realization led to a different approach.
With his Managing Director, Agustin Santolaya, Rottlant set out on a search for exceptional existing vineyards. Over a period of months, a map was developed identifying areas in Rioja Alta and Rioja Baja where soil conditions were most desirable and where specific characteristics of altitude and orientation were present. Their research led to relationships with a half dozen families owning vineyards of at least thirty years of age. Eventually, Rottlant secured contractual agreements for control over seventeen different vineyards, each a distinct microclimate.
Collectively totaling 100 acres, the seventeen contract vineyards are located in Rioja Alta and Rioja Baja, sited at the zones’ higher elevations between 1,800 and 2,100 feet. Fourteen of the vineyards are the Rioja Alta in close proximity to each other and to the principal estate at Haro, and are planted to Tempranillo and Graciano. Of the remaining three, one is located near Tudelilla in the Rioja Baja planted to Garnacha, and theother two near Logroño planted to Tempranillo. The varietal distribution of plantings reflects soil profiles, with chalky limestone, iron outcroppings and alluvia in Rioja Alta and arid, sandy soils over a limestone pan in Rioja Baja. . All of the vines are bush trained and cultivated without chemicals, and range from 30 to 55 years of age with a yield of less than two tons per acre, illustrating Rottlant’s conviction that only old vines can fully express the complete microclimate in the wine.
In 1998, the Roda estate vineyards assumed a critical role in Roda’s future, and potentially that of Rioja,. Agustin Santolaya, a former professor at the University of La Rioja and an oenologist as well as a vineyardist, was the project’s author. He described the project’s rationale as follows :
In Rioja, clonal selection of the tempranillo began in the 1970s. A selection was made of about ten clones which were meant to preserve the genetic complexity of tempranillo.
From the early 1990s on, practically all new plantings of tempranillo came from these ten clones. At present, there has been a further simplification of clonal variety and only three or four clones are being reproduced.
Every new tempranillo vine grafted around the world is genetically identical to the one from which it was taken, and every old tempranillo vineyard which is uprooted leaves behind vast and valuable information in lost genetic nuances.
Great wines need to be complex and this complexity comes from old vines that have long, deep roots. At Roda, since we work only with old vines, every time an old vineyard is uprooted we feel as if part of our philosophy is being lost.
We could not afford to see to the loss of a variety that has given us so much pleasure. Therefore, in 1998, we decided to develop a project with the aim of recovering as many different biotypes of tempranillo as possible from the Rioja region. We selected 552 different strains of tempranillo based on 33 different criteria which we then grafted into fifteen plants per strain in our vineyards. This is the largest clonal selection of tempranillo in the world.
We must follow the results to see if the differences obtained from the original vineyards are maintained in the newly grafted vines. Some of the old vineyards we selected for the project have now disappeared and at this point we do even know the benefits of this study. But we are very pleased because we have a unique treasure : the genetic diversity of the tempranillo.
Agustin Santolaya
Managing Director of Roda & Dauro
December 2003
The Roda estate winery was built in three phases: the first in 1991, the second in 1996 and the last completed in 2000. It incorporated the first selection table in Rioja, where the clusters from each vineyard are rigorously sorted for health and cleanliness. Primary fermentation takes place in seventeen French oak vats, one for each vineyard plot, of 12,000 to 20,000 liter capacity, controlled through a system of hollow stainless steel plates submerged in the must through which cold water is circulated to regulate temperature. Each vat is equipped with an automatic remontage device.
The centerpiece of the winery is a unique malolactic fermentation room, the first one of its kind in the world, designed by architect Pere Llimona. The light-flooded hall houses 1,000 casks which are kept at a temperature of 20ºC (68ºF) by panels which radiantly heat the floor to induce malolactic fermentation without movement of air. Following the secondary fermentation, stabilization is accomplished by opening a large window in the hall’s north façade to reduce the ambient temperature to 5ºC (41ºF) from December through February. The aging period is completed over twelve to sixteen months in a large bay excavated into one side of the hall.
Vinification and blending are under the direction of winemakers Agustín Santolaya and Carlos Diez de la Concepción. Maintained separately as single vineyard cuvées until the blends are assembled, the casks destined for Roda I Reserva are selected from the firmer, more structured wines while those for Roda II Reserva are selected from more forward, expressive wines, each representing different vineyard selections and slightly different varietal blends. With Cirsion, the approach is unique: grapes from certain very old vine plots were found to begin polymerization of anthocyanins and tannins within the berry at the very end of the ripening period before harvest. The Cirsion blend comprises wines vinified from select clusters from these plots, yielding a wine that is both sumptuously concentrated and sublimely elegant. The wines receive a natural fining and no filtering before bottling, and are held in bottle before release.
Not fully satisfied with quality until the 1992 vintage, Rottlant sold the first wines in bulk. His first release, in 1996, was 30,000 bottles of Roda I and Roda II. Production has since grown to its own imposed top of approximately 300,000 bottles, of which Roda I represents roughly fifty percent, Roda II roughly fifty percent and Cirsion one to two percent. Exports extend to more than 50 countries.
