Artazu (Artadi)
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Borne of eternal curiosity, Artazu is the Navarra wine wing of Artadi. Comprised of vineyards that, were it not for their incredible slope, would have been ripped out during one of the Spanish wars to make way for cereal farming, Artazu's old vines today generate an incredibly aromatic, velvety selection of wines, based on Garnacha Blanco & Tinto.
►Garrett’s Blog from our visit to Artadi
In the 1980s, Juan Carlos Lopez de la Calle of famed (then) Rioja house Artadi met the American winemaker Randall Graham, which would be a fortuitous meeting in the winery’s direction. When Randall came to visit Laguardia, he pleaded with Juan Carlos to plant Garnacha. Instead, Juan Carlos rented - and later purchased - two co-ops in the Navarra village of Artazu. Though the joint production with Graham ended in 2000, Juan Carlos held on to the prized Santa Cruz vineyard, the wines from which today are hailed as the preeminent Navarra Garnacha. “When crisis came in the 1970s to Spain, and many of the vineyards were ripped out for crops,” Carlos adds, “The Artazu vineyards were so steep that they would not be able to grow crops efficiently. So, we have post-phylloxera vines from the thirties and forties - bush vines, small bunches, capable of incredible complexity and depth.”
While their father may have seen the future, today the children reap the rewards of his labor (and now their own). “In the nineties,” Carlos says in reference to another Navarra plot, Pazos de San Martin, “They couldn’t get the [Garnacha] grape to ripen, so they made rosé. It has become much more profound, but is very floral - lavender - and when I drink it I think of Fixin, which is sometimes more pleasurable than, say, Vosne-Romanee.”
