November 2025 Crianza Club

Ramirez De La Piscina 2019 Reserva Rioja Regular Price: $27.99 Club Price: $23.79

We are big fans of the Ramirez de la Piscina family.  So much so that their wines have made it into our Club twice in the last 12 months:  the October 2024 Crianza club and the February 2025 Tinto club.  For good reason, as you will (re)discover below.  

The Ramirez de la Piscina family of San Vicente have been farming grapes in this historic village since the 13th century. Their family name is shared with the hermitage of Santa María de la Piscina, a 12th century Romanesque hermitage, a historic landmark site that is engraved with the Ramirez family crest, speaking to the family's long history in Rioja. Today, they produce small quantities of extremely classical Rioja wines from estate and long-term contracted vineyards in San Vicente and Abalos, two of the most important villages in the Sonsierra Riojana, a geographic "triangle" of quality between San Vicente, Abalos, and Labastida.  A LOT more details on the family (including details from my September 2024 visit) can be found in the writeup of the Seleccion Especial

Ramírez de la Piscina farms their estate vineyards, along with several leased parcels under long-term stewardship, in and around the villages of San Vicente de la Sonsierra and Ábalos: prime Rioja Alta territory set between the foothills of the Sierra Cantabria and the Ebro River. The family practices sustainable, dry-farmed viticulture, tending their old Tempranillo vines as traditional goblets, spur-pruned and worked entirely by hand. Every stage, from pruning to harvest, is manual; there is no mechanization here, only the steady rhythm of human labor moving through the rows.

After a rigorous hand selection, the grapes (100% Tempranillo) are destemmed but left whole to allow a slow, even fermentation in temperature-controlled stainless steel with neutral yeast. Maceration lasts between twenty and thirty days to extract depth and structure before the wine is transferred to concrete vats for spontaneous malolactic fermentation. The 2019 Reserva then spent 18 months aging in a mix of American and French oak barrels in the family’s underground cellars, followed by five months of natural settling in stainless steel and 18 more months of bottle aging before release.

And what does all of this care and craft result in? A wine that feels both classical and alive, Rioja as it’s meant to be: built on patience, hand work, and time.  Just like the Crianza we featured before and the Seleccion Especial, this wine is truly on our favorites list and we hope it makes it onto yours as well.  

Bodegas Illurce 2022 Rioja Graciano Regular Price: $16.99 Club Price: $14.44

I visited Bodegas y Viñedos Ilurce in the fall of 2024, when the Graciano vines were heavy with fruit — small, dark clusters that seemed to radiate color even in the soft Riojan light. The family’s vineyards stretch from the edge of Alfaro in what was once called Rioja Baja, now officially Rioja Oriental. On the drive from winery to vineyard, a look out the window for just twenty minutes made the abundance of the region clear. Pears, apples, berries, even pork and chorizo factories line the roads. Rioja Oriental isn’t just a grape basket — it’s a literal horn of plenty.

Walking through the vineyards with the winemaker, we stopped often to inspect leaves ragged from the work of African grasshoppers, a new and vicious plague he blamed on the warming climate. They can strip a canopy in days, sometimes hours — not only the leaves but the fruit itself — leaving vines gasping just before harvest. He spoke about fighting them tooth and nail, sometimes with nothing more than vigilance and timing. Yet in spite of that, the fruit that season was beautiful: resilient clusters of Graciano, bursting with juice and color, tasting of plum skin and dusty heat.

Later, at the family’s modest winery, we drank their Rio Madre Graciano alongside thin pork cutlets grilled over grape wood in a traditional barilla — that ingenious flippable clamshell grill found all over Spain. The wine was dense and gleaming in the glass, with a jammy, red-black core that smelled of smoke and sun-dried fruit. On the palate, it carried something more unusual — a texture that reminded me of burlap and olive oil, earthy and tactile, as though the fruit had absorbed the scent of the soil itself. It’s the kind of description that sounds off-putting until you taste it, when it suddenly makes perfect sense: deep, smoky, and a little wild, yet harmonious in a way that only Rioja’s southern heat can create.

This Graciano comes from vines rooted in the alluvial soils of the Ebro’s southern reaches, mixed with red clay and streaked with iron. The grapes are hand-harvested, destemmed but left whole, and fermented in concrete and stainless steel before six months of aging in used French barrels that lend texture but no overt oak flavor. The result is both rustic and precise — a Rioja that refuses to imitate the north’s Tempranillo elegance and instead celebrates its own muscular, sun-warmed character.

Rio Madre is a wine that insists on being shared. The jamminess and smoke make it a natural companion to pork and grilled vegetables, but it’s also perfectly timed for the holidays. It’s the kind of red that brings depth to roast turkey and gravy, the kind that feels as good in the glass as it smells from the kitchen.  Unlike the wine we paired it with, Francisco Barona's 2022 masterpiece, which is suave and elegant, the Illurce Graciano is a simple, honest, rustic wine.  Dark, fruity, 14.5% alcohol, and proud of the fruitful plenty that Rioja Oriental produces.

There’s something about Ilurce’s wines that stays with you.  It is almost as if the mixed agriculture of the region harkens to an agricultural honesty of the wine.  It is not the most subtle and suave of wines, but having been wrestled from the jaws of grasshoppers, it speaks with a basic honesty. Rioja Oriental has always lived close to the ground: orchards, vegetables, sausage, and now these fierce little berries of Graciano. It’s a place where you can taste the land’s and a farmer's toughness, simplicity and honesty in the wine. And in the deep dark red glow of Rio Madre, all of those qualities sure add up to a virtue.