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Rioja at 100 – singular wines

Monday 9 March 2026 • 2 min read
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 Juan Carlos Sancha in the Cerro la Isa vineyard with mule

A focus on single-village, single-vineyard and single-variety Rioja. Above, Juan Carlos Sancha and his mule working the Cerro la Isa vineyard – source of Ferran’s standout white wine of the tasting.

To kick off my marathon tastings held to mark the 100th anniversary of Rioja, I and my co-conspirators Pablo Franco and Peter Arijs decided to focus on wines that are created with the desire to show off a specific origin – an idea that is relatively new within this hundred-year-old DO. (See Rioja at 100 – a personal look for some history.)

That means that we focused on Vinos...

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