Fernández de Piérola
D.O.C. Rioja
The first vintage from this Rioja Alavesa estate was in 1996, right in the thick of a heavy surge in Spanish wine production where many wineries in Rioja and beyond made a break from tradition. Piérola is certainly untradtional in the sense that they are working with only 20 hectares of estate-grown tempranillo. Even such excellent producers as Remelluri farm over 100 hectares in the production of their single-vineyard wines. Thankfully this bodega didn't go chasing any trends that were so prevalent in this time that pushed style boundries to extremes. The focus at Piérola is not about a break with tradition, it is about producing elegant, top quality Rioja that reflects the site where the grapes are grown and can be mistaken for nothing else in the world but a very pure expression of the Rioja Alavesa.
The soil here is the classic white, chalky limestone that is essential for the best tempranillo. Vines ranging from 30 to over 100 years old are trained in the classic Rioja "en vaso" style. The farming is done in a very ecological manner with an empasis on obtaining clean, healthy, ripe fruit that is all harvested by hand. The alcohol level in both the Crianza and Reserva is a relatively modest 13%. Besides a racking at six months, there is virtually no human intervention in the cellar after fermentation pumpovers. There is an extremely deft hand at work at Piérola that demonstrates a perfect ability to marry ripe fruit with very high quality, tight-grained wood so that the result is a wonderfully harmonious wine that drinks well on release and will continue to evolve gracefully for many years.
