Rioja Oriental, Spain — vines, forest, and a whole lot of quiet
Most Rioja you've drunk came from a blend — grapes trucked in from across the region, married in a big cellar, sold under a famous name. Casa La Rad is the opposite of that. It's a single estate: one vast property in the eastern foothills of Rioja, where the vines, the winery and the wines all share the same postcode. What grows here ends up in the bottle. Nothing is bought in. That sounds like a small thing. It isn't — it's the whole story.
A hunting ground turned vineyard
The estate sits in the Valle de Ocón, in the eastern, wilder end of Rioja near the village of Ausejo, up in the foothills of the Iberian Massif. It was once a hunting reserve, and you can still feel it: nearly 800 hectares of land, most of it left exactly as nature arranged it. Roughly 550 hectares are indigenous woodland — mountain and Mediterranean species tangled together — with olive groves, almond trees and cereal fields filling the gaps. The vines, around 110 hectares of them, are tucked into clearings between ancient rock, where you can barely see the soil for the stones.
It's a working estate that's also, frankly, a nature reserve. The people behind it talk about biodiversity the way other producers talk about oak — as something central, not decorative. The wines are a by-product of keeping the whole place alive.
Why the altitude matters (and why you can taste it)
Here's the bit that ends up in your glass. These vineyards climb from 530 up to 750 metres — high, by Rioja standards. Altitude means cool nights, and cool nights mean grapes that ripen slowly and hold onto their freshness. You get the warmth and generosity you'd expect from Spain, but with a streak of brightness running through the middle that stops the wines feeling heavy.
The vines themselves are old — some past sixty years — spread across 49 separate plots, each with its own mix of stony, chalky, clay-flecked soil. Farming is organic in practice (if not on the certificate), and the winemaking is deliberately hands-off: let the place speak, get out of the way. The current winemaker, Bárbara Palacios, came home to do exactly that, after years making wine around the world. Her line on it is lovely and tells you everything: vineyard, time, and sensitivity — nothing else.
Three wines, one place
The range is easy to navigate, and it climbs gently in price and intensity:
Viña Solarce is the everyday range — fresh, juicy, unfussy reds, whites and a rosé, all around the £15 mark. This is your Tuesday-night Rioja, and it overdelivers wildly for the money.
Casa La Rad is the step up: the estate's own name on the label, a bit more structure, a bit more to think about — the Tinto Selección, a textured white, a single-variety Garnacha and Malvasía.
Alma La Rad sits at the top. Alma means soul, which is a touch poetic, but it earns it — this is the estate distilled into one bottle, built to keep for years.
How and when to drink it
The Viña Solarce Tinto wants nothing more than a roast chicken, a Wednesday, and a corkscrew — serve it with a very light chill if it's warm out. The Solarce Blanco and Rosado are aperitif wines: cold, on a terrace, no occasion required. Move up to the Casa La Rad reds for a proper dinner — lamb, mushrooms, anything slow-cooked — and give them half an hour in the glass to stretch their legs. And the Alma? That's a bottle for a table you actually care about. Decant it, and don't be in a hurry.
People's favourite: the Viña Solarce Rioja Tinto — your best-selling Casa La Rad wine, and no surprise. It's the one that converts people: cheap enough to drink without thinking, good enough to make them come back.
My favourite: the Alma La Rad — because it's the estate with its guard down. Everything Casa La Rad is about — the altitude, the old vines, the silence up at the tree line — lands in that glass.
Discover the whole range here.
Cheers! Jon Cellier