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Bodegas Olarra
La Rioja, Spain6 wines3.7 avg
42
1973 Rioja house on the outskirts of Logroño, built as a modern statement - Y-shaped winery, 111 hexagonal barrel domes, and a reliable modern-classical style.
Bodegas Olarra was founded in 1973 in Logroño by Luis Olarra Ugartemendia, a Basque steel industrialist (Altos Hornos de Vizcaya) who joined a wave of ambitious new Rioja projects backed by Basque and Jerez capital in the late-Franco era. After Olarra sold his stake during the steel crisis, the Ucín family - also from the Basque steel world - took over and have remained at the helm through generations. Today the estate is run by the Limousin-Ucín family - Pedro, Luis, and Marcial.
The winery itself is one of the more ambitious architectural statements in Spanish wine. Designed by Juan Antonio Ridruejo, it is built in a Y-shape whose three wings represent Rioja's three sub-zones - Alta, Alavesa, and what was then Baja (now Oriental). The barrel cellar underneath, with its 111 hexagonal concrete domes, was one of the first serious exercises in architecture-as-climate-control in a Spanish winery. When people talk about "modern Rioja" as a style, they are often talking about this era - and this building.
Vineyards include roughly 160 hectares close to the winery that feed the Añares range, with additional sourcing through a network of around 200 growers around Logroño. The grapes are the Rioja classics - Tempranillo dominant, with Garnacha, Graciano, Mazuelo, and Viura. The longtime winemaker Ezequiel García ("El Brujo") was in post from 1974 to 1995 - twenty-one years that shaped the modern-classical house style of French and American oak in careful balance, moderate extraction, built for mid-term aging. He died in 2017.
The range:
- Añares - Blanco, Rosado, Crianza, Reserva. The everyday tier, reliably good.
- Cerro Añón - a Reserva-and-above blend sourced across Rioja, the step-up.
- Olarra (the eponymous bottling) - prestige cuvée, released only in exceptional vintages.
- El Rayo - a newer single-varietal line (most visibly a Graciano), the house's attempt at a more terroir-forward voice.
The group also owns Bodegas Ondarre (Rioja Oriental, founded 1985 by the same ownership), along with properties in Castilla-La Mancha, Rueda, and Ribera del Duero. Olarra is not the house anyone chooses when they want to feel the edge of Rioja, but it is one of the houses that defined what middle Rioja tastes like - and that is its own kind of achievement.
