This exceptional, rocky white Rioja goes from strength to strength. From 2023, the new name reflects the wine’s origin: a blend of white grapes co-planted within the poorer soils of the Tempranillo vineyards, harvested and fermented as one. Today, the blend comprises 85% Viura with 10% Malvasía Riojana and 5% Garnacha Blanca. The grapes are drawn mainly from the cool, high-country of Ábalos, including the old-vine vineyards of San Cristóbal (650 metres) and Perquita, planted in 1965. Since 2022, the wine has benefited from a portion of 75-year-old Viura from Baños de Ebro. 

In a region starting to elevate its white wines, Tom Puyaubert’s new wave Rioja Blancos are a revelation. In the cellar, the grapes ferment wild in concrete, and the wine is raised in a mixture of concrete eggs, old barrels and 4,000-litre foudre as Puyaubert seeks to harness the mineral salinity and tension given by the rocky limestone soils and old vines in his highland vineyards. It’s an expressive, floral-and stone-scented white that bolts through the palate in a salvo of orchard fruit, orange oil and hints of spice. As always, this wine is equal parts mouthfilling and impeccably bright and fresh. 

This single-vineyard white is one of the most exciting white wines we have tasted from Spain. Period. It comes from a vineyard of the same name, a tiny plot of 80-year-old Malvasía Riojana rooted in the highland limestone soils of San Vicente de la Sonsierra. To preserve what Tom calls “the mineral and citric character that this variety can develop in limestone soils of Rioja Alta”, it spends two weeks on skins and ferments with indigenous yeasts in a 950-litre concrete egg, where it also matured for one year before bottling. 

The altitude of over 500 metres, early harvesting and Tom Puyaubert’s analogue winemaking give this wine a gorgeous, chalky personality to complement the Malvasía’s succulent fruit. On the nose, it is compact and focused with scents of yellow flowers and fennel bulb alongside enticing salinity. Galloping with internal energy, it’s compact and sinewy in texture with a sleek core of crystalised white fruits snapped onto the tense and precise finish. A touch of reduction only adds to the limpid, Burgundian feel. It’s a dazzling expression of a great vineyard.

This wine has dropped the Bozeto styling and is now simply called Exopto. New name, same vibrant, great-value Rioja. This pan-regional expression of Rioja’s three principal grape varieties is conceived as a lively, easy-drinking introduction to the range. Most entry-level wines from this region are based on Tempranillo (a variety easier and more profitable to grow), yet here Garnacha represents 65% of the blend. This Garnacha hails from very old vines in the sandy, river-stone terroirs of El Agudo and Al Casillón at Alfaro (Rioja Oriental). The Tempranillo is drawn from a selection of mature vines in Ábalos (high-county Rioja Alta), and some Ábalos Graciano adds freshness and finesse.

The wine ferments in a combination of concrete and steel tank, then ages for six months in concrete and 5,000-litre oak vats. These days, Tom includes a measure of semi-carbonic maceration for extra buoyancy. Opening with perfumes of dusky berries and well-judged spice, this is a wonderfully aromatic, restaurant-friendly wine. It’s a wine that impresses with its precision rather than power. Even so, the warmer year gives an open, juicy wine and a great deal of drinking pleasure: spice, vibrancy and velvety flow flecked with notes of espresso, dried flowers and wild woody herbiness to go with its smoky blackberry fruit. If you’re looking for a bright, succulent grower Rioja, few will deliver better value than this.

Exopto’s village-level wine is a blend of 80% Tempranillo, 10% Garnacha and 10% Graciano drawn from a dozen old-vine, high-altitude plots entirely in the western Sonsierra zone in the lee of the Sierra Cantabria ranges. Previously based solely on Ábalos vines, since 2020, the wine includes fruit from the old vines of Los Pozos and El Sacramento in San Vicente, in addition to old-vine Tempranillo from a vineyard in Baños de Ebro purchased in 2019. Then, Tom adds the fruit from the lower part of his brilliant ‘cru’ vineyard, La Mimbrera.

Co-fermented naturally in cement vats, the wine undergoes a short maceration of one week before starting maturation in oak barriques. The wine finishes aging in large, neutral 600-litre barrels to lessen the already minimal oak impact. Reflecting its high-altitude origins, this is a darker, deeper and more structured Rioja than the wine above. 

This new release carries a special, one-off label celebrating this wine’s 20th anniversary. Reflecting the vintage, it’s a deeper, more succulent wine than its predecessor: a juicily ripe, cool-climate Rioja with layers of vibrant blue and blackberry fruit shot through with fruitcakey spice and a sappy, plum-damson undercurrent of freshness. There’s 15% new oak this year, yet the fruit provides all the energy. Plenty of fine, powdery tannins provide food-friendly tension and backbone. 

Tom Puyaubert has long been a cheerleader for Graciano grown in Rioja’s Atlantic-influenced terroirs, where it accounts for barely 2% of total plantings. The small parcel, within the existing, old-vine La Mimbrera vineyard, was planted at 5,000 vines/ha and holds sentimental value for its grower; it was the first vineyard Puyaubert planted in Ábalos. The grapes were destemmed and fermented naturally in old oak. The wine spent two weeks on skins and aged for 18 months in the same 600-litre barrel. Puyaubert believes his 2021 is the best Graciano he has made. It’s a superbly fine-grained example, with a beautiful mélange of herbs, vibrant redcurrant and blueberry fruit supported by chalky intensity and spun-out palate length. The finish lingers with fine, sculpted tannins and hints of garrigue and liquorice goodness—a wonderful expression of variety and region.

El Espinal was the first label under Tom Puyaubert’s Colección Miguel Angel Mato. Mato, a native of San Vicente de la Sonsierra, is the seasoned grower who does all the work, cultivating by mule in some of Exopto’s principal vineyards. He also owns several old vineyards high on the slopes of the Sierra Cantabria, including El Espinal. The plot name Espinal references the pine trees on the exposed slopes of the Sierra Cantabria in San Vicente, which have always been a part of this high-country landscape. At 650 metres, El Espinal is getting on for serious altitude in the context of Rioja.

This site—a 0.3-hectare limestone/clay vineyard—is planted to bush vines of the extremely rare Maturana Tinta vine, a re-emerging variety in Rioja. The Wine Grapes bible classifies it as Trousseau; however, Puyaubert tells us that this is not the case and that these vines are, in fact, Castets, a now almost extinct French variety that was once grown in some quantity in the Bordeaux area (and is related to Cabernet Franc). Another atypical facet of this cuvée is Puyaubert’s use of vinification intégrale, whereby the fruit fermented in closed, 600-litre French oak barrels, which are rolled several times a day. There are no pumpovers, no plunging—just rolling, which results in infusion rather than extraction. Following fermentation and pressing, the juice is racked back into these same casks for 15 months before bottling.

The result is unlike anything you may have tasted from Rioja before. Picked a whole month after Exopto’s Ábalos vineyards, the inviting dark purple, almost inky hue draws you in before layers of complexity stream from the glass: waves of dark fruit, nettles and scrub and the pine cone/green peppercorn note so commonly found in the wines from this site. Then you get waves of moreish mid-palate freshness, lifted chalky tannins and lip-smacking acidity. Like an outstanding Loire Cab Franc, yet with perhaps more flesh, it’s a superb and unique red from Rioja’s high country. As one taster put it: Yum.

This limited-release field blend celebrates the very first plot of old bush vines Tom Puyaubert purchased in the village of Ábalos back in 2003. La Mimbrera is a 0.5-hectare plot of vines, only one kilometre away from El Espinal, yet it is a radically different terroir with different varieties. Planted on a limestone hillside at El Hoyo with stunning views over the Sierra de Cantabria, the vineyard is roughly 75% Tempranillo, 20% Garnacha and 5% Viura, all surrounded by the wild garrigue of the area. The Garnacha vines were planted well over a century ago, while the Tempranillo and Viura sit in the 70- to 80-year-old range. The grapes are hand-harvested and co-fermented using wild yeasts, and the wine is matured in a single, used French oak barrel before finishing its aging in a sandstone amphora. The new release is packed with class, from the purity of focused blackberry fruit to the mouthcoating, chalky structure that clings to the palate. Marked by the limestone soils, the finish is long and penetrating. It’s a gorgeous, one-of-a-kind Atlantic-influenced Rioja with a proper frame for long aging.