Mere moments into meeting with Carlos and Patricia of the famed Artadi estate, Patricia excitedly reached for the computer screen to share something, only to pull back in an instant. Feeling her energy pulsing through the screen, we egged her on, and finally, she caved; all of a sudden, a map flashed before our eyes, and we had the veil lifted on what Rioja once was, and what the ex-Rioja estate of Artadi would become.
“Rioja didn’t provide us the ability to add the villages,” Carlos lamented. “The region name wouldn’t discern between each village, and the region is massive. Our village - Laguardia - where my family grew vines, is bigger than Chateauneuf-du-Pape.” He lets this sink in for a moment. “My father (Juan Carlos López de Lacalle) left Rioja in 2015; he saw beyond his generation’s kind that “wine”, as a concept, isn’t just the region. He sat us down, and asked us the question: should we leave Rioja?”
Once upon a time, the vision of “Rioja” the wine region was idealized by, as Carlos calls them, “The Bordeaux Guys.” After their arrival in the early 1900s, the Bordeaux influence morphed Rioja’s early ways of carbonic maceration and 4000-liter casks into a more modern style, replete with small, French oak barrels. Before the style could be universally adopted, the three plagues arrived: World Wars I & II, with the plight of phylloxera sandwiched in between. Many - if not most - vineyards were replaced with crops, for the simple reason of survival. Rioja as a wine-producing region barely survived. In the 1950s, the monetary backing of commercial Jerez wineries resuscitated Rioja, but into a new design which still is what most of us know: American oak, extended (and oxidating) aging, and old-school, funky wines.
Drawing her cursor along the map, Patricia outlines what “Rioja” is as a whole; zooming in (past the innumerable restaurants the two adore, dotted all over the country - keep that in mind for later), we are introduced to Artadi’s vision, to the future of what was once all encompassed by “Rioja”. “The second generation wants to talk about villages, like other regions,” Patricia asserts. “My father, he was the first winemaker of our family - everyone just sold to the co-op before this. Too many were thinking just about yields. Now, today, we are thinking about terroir, outcome; we’re not thinking about how productive we can be, but about typicity, about our villages, about our future.”
They pause with the map, showing us how from their father’s first vintage, through exploring his curiosities Artadi grew: from Rioja’s Laguardia to Garnacha-rich Navarra, and finally out to the fishing village of Getaria, the family that counted not only Juan Carlos, but now Patricia & Carlos had a vast palate with which to play. Leaving Rioja, you ask? “We all said yes.”
Contrasting Artadi’s own style with that of Rioja, Carlos proudly stated that, as of 2025, they have not one new barrel in house; the smallest of those barrels are five hundred and six hundred liters. “The region as a whole, they pushed for more ripeness, more body; for us, Tempranillo has structure - we don’t need to push it.” Thinking back to their map of restaurants, he adds that wine is meant to be drunk - but in the world, not at the winery. “Remember, you are at a table, with food - not in the lab - the wines should be able to be drunk, to finish the bottle!”
In the 1980s, Juan Carlos 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.”
Continuing the comparison through their obvious love of Burgundy, Patricia and Carlos expanded on their decisions, with dad, to separately vinify and bottle the Rioja plots. “El Villar,” says Patricia, “Is more Volnay, Nuits-Saint-Georges, whereas Laguardia is more Pommard, more Vosne, sometimes some Chambolle.”
As a final cap to their growing empire of curiosity, Izar-Leku was born of an idea to just make Txakoli, from the fishing village of Getaria. They had a friend who was a Basque cider producer, who helped facilitate the introductions to purchase a 1.2 hectare plot of vineyards. Split into three parcels of Hondarrabi Zuri & Hondarribi Beltza, the idea was just to craft something simple, enjoyable. However, to the seasoned wine drinkers, Patricia admits, “It felt like Vin Clair”, alluding to a Champagne base wine - traditionally high in acid, low in alcohol and all too often low in complexity, too. “We thought, maybe this could be better with a second fermentation,” Carlos says, and the family made a small amount for themselves with their first harvest in 2015. Encouraged by the results, Carlos called in a friend. “Rapha Bereche, he helped us for three years, and the base wines developed more flavor, and it still has great acid even though we’re harvesting later than Champagne!”
While they muse on their Izar-Leku being the possible future of Txakoli, they admit that the two grapes (Zuri, the white, makes up most of the blend; Beltza, the red variation and parent of Cabernet Franc) are like “A cat that lands on four legs.” owing to the wind-swept region being largely resistant to disease, and rather consistent year-to-year.
With a wealth of knowledge in their minds and hands, the future of Artadi is bright with Carlos and Patricia. Both spent a good bit of time in the US, and have traversed the globe’s wine regions looking for inspiration and further confirmation of their beliefs. One thing is true: they are not misguided. Carlos boldly declares, “Think of DRC - nobody knows how many winemakers they have had.” Knowing this could go anywhere, we leave a gap of silence for him to fill. He does so, truthfully and admirably: “We don’t want you to think of my father, or of us. Only think of the vineyards.”
