The winery and its buildings
When he began to build the winery D. Rafael López de Heredia y Landeta little realised that his masterpiece would one day be acknowledged as an example to the rest of the industry as the most perfect combination of buildings and vineyards. Like many medieval masterpieces, still incomplete, the buildings stand below and above ground - a veritable "Cathedral to wine". Walking the vaulted underground corridors and staircases you travel back in time and you can still sense the founder's touch in the very stones and fabric of the building.
View of the winery with its tower "Txori-Toki"
Today the estate covers an area of 53.076 square metres including 19.718 square meters of buildings, 3.433, 41 square meters of these are underground cellars up to 200 metres long, descending to an overall depth of 15 metres. Stored within these cellars built around the heart of a mountain are found some 13.000 Bordeaux oak barrels.
Also the large family of 72 oak vats from such areas as Cantabria, Bosnia, Allier and America, their capacity ranges from 60 hectolitres, the baby, up to the largest which holds some 640 hectolitres. Oak casks plays a pivotal role in the fermentation of our wines as we use completely natural and traditional methods of wine making. Work on building the winery is never ending, as with the Cathedrals of old. Every successive member of the family takes on the task of completing an aspect of the founder's original vision. His plans combined with a continuing family commitment have resulted in each generation leaving its mark on the complex.
Each part of the cellars has a name given through the last hundred years of construction. These names, some of which cannot be translated are evocative of the past and their origin lies in local legends and our old Rioja dialect: "La Bodega Vieja" (The Old Cellar), "La Bodega Nueva" (The New Cellar), "La Bisiesta", "La Dolorosa", "La Bodega de Reservas", "El Caladillo", "El Frontón" (The Pelota Court), "El Cementerio" and "El Calado". A visit to them will leave a lasting impression of romance and mystery through which runs the rich and golden aroma of old oak.
An
aerial view of the bodega as conceived by our founder