BADIOLA L3Z4 (Leza) 2018

Leza tends to produce our most structured wine. Vineyard parcels are higher than in Villabuena, closest to the Sierra Cantabria, on average 600m. The mesoclimate here is cooler and more humid, leading to later ripening and more dense, inky, muscular tannins. The fruit profile tends towards darker fruit, black cherries and a distinct herbal complexity, reminiscent of thyme and rosemary.

All our village wines are made in the same way. Grapes from the selected parcels in each village are handpicked in small crates and manually selected on a sorting table. We consciously do NOT use our optical sorting equipment for our fine wines, because manual, human sorting allows us to keep the desirable diversity and subtle variation in ripeness and grape morphology, adding complexity and personality of the individual parcels of old vines to the final wine. Alcoholic and malolactic fermentation processes are simple, in small stainless steel tanks. Maceration times and gentle pump-overs are decided individually by tasting, looking for balance and the maximum expression of personality, but not for high extraction of colour or tannins.

We decide on ageing vessels and time individually for each vintage, combining stainless steel and concrete tanks with bigger and smaller oak vessels, both new and used. The aim is to understand and respect the expression of the unique village character, without excessive use of new oak or oxidative ageing. In the case of Badiola Leza 2018, 47% of the wine was aged in first and second use barriques of 300 litres of French oak, for 9 months. The rest of the wine was aged for the same time in tank. Both elements were blended and bottled in  January the 31st of 2019.

5.066 bottles were made.

Vintage: 2018

DOCa Rioja – Rioja Alavesa

Variety: 100 % Tempranillo