Bideona

Bideona is the Rioja Alavesa project of Telmo Rodriguez and Pablo Eguzkiza, two figures who have spent thirty years arguing that Spain's great vineyards deserve to be treated as places rather than as brands.

The name is Basque, and the whole project is built on village and single-plot bottlings rather than on Rioja's traditional ageing classifications. That is a deliberate rejection of the Crianza and Reserva system, which describes how long a wine spent in oak but says nothing about where it came from. Here the labels name the village instead: Laguardia, Villabuena, Samaniego, Leza.

Rioja Alavesa is the coolest and highest of the three sub-regions, sitting in the lee of the Sierra de Cantabria on chalky clay, and it has the finest raw material in Rioja. The wines are made with minimal extraction and restrained oak, so what shows is the site. It is among the clearest expressions of the new thinking in the region.