Conde Valdemar

Conde Valdemar is the best-known label of Bodegas Valdemar, the Martinez Bujanda family's winery in Oyon, a small town in Alava on the northern edge of Rioja. The family have been making wine here since 1889, when the first generation worked out of a small stone cellar in the village. They are on the fifth generation now, and the business is still theirs: Ana and Jesus Martinez Bujanda run it today, having taken it on from their father Jesus, who built the modern Bodegas Valdemar with his own father in the 1980s. That continuity is getting rarer among Rioja names of this size.

What separates Valdemar from the many other competent family bodegas in Rioja is a genuine appetite for going first. Their own timeline is a list of firsts, and most of them stand up. In 1982 they were among the first to take the Graciano grape seriously again, at a point when it was disappearing from Rioja because it is difficult to grow and gives very little fruit. In 1985 they were, they say, the first European winery to install temperature control, and they made a 100 per cent Garnacha Reserva when nobody was doing single-variety Rioja. In 1989 came a barrel-fermented white. In 2001 they turned to Maturana, another local variety that had almost gone, and in 2009 they made a wine from Tempranillo Blanco. In 2019 they opened Valdemar Estates in Washington State, and in 2022 they made Rioja's first sparkling wine from a single classified vineyard. That is a record of doing things first rather than simply of being old.

They farm more than three hundred hectares of their own vines across all three sub-zones of Rioja, and the top of the range is built around named estates rather than around the Crianza and Reserva ladder: Alto Cantabria, Balcon de Pilatos, Las Seis Alhajas, La Recaja, La Gargantilla, Altos Valdemar and Cana Pomar. Below that sits the Conde Valdemar range proper, which is the classic, well-mannered face of the house: Tempranillo-led reds with proper barrel ageing, plus fresh whites and rosados. The estate wines and the Conde Valdemar range are two different things, and it is worth knowing which one you are buying. The estate wines are made in tiny quantities and only in years that deserve them.

Some names to know at the interesting end. The Conde Valdemar Rioja Rose is the everyday one, a Garnacha and Mazuelo blend that does what a good dry Spanish rose should. The Finca Alto Cantabria is a Vinedo Singular, Rioja's top vineyard classification, made from Viura on an eleven-hectare plateau above the Ebro at Logrono; I have tasted this one and it is one of Rioja's single-vineyard stars. Las Seis Alhajas is a 100 per cent Graciano from a 1.4-hectare plot, made only in exceptional years, and it is the wine that best explains the family's obsession with the varieties everyone else gave up on.

The Conde Valdemar Crianza, Reserva and Gran Reserva are the wines most people mean when they say Conde Valdemar.