Compania de Vinos Telmo Rodriguez

During the month of March we will be featuring the wines of Telmo Rodriguez as our wine of the month. Telmo Rodriguez is one of the current pioneers in Spanish winemaking, really focusing on native varietals throughout Spain. Ranging from ultra limited high end wines, to everyday wines; all have been well recognized and praised internationally. Well known to obscure wine regions and varietals are all represented in Telmos wine portfolio.

Telmo got into the family wine business in Rioja, one of the more widely recognized wine regions in Spain. He studied viticulture and oenology at the University of Bordeaux. In the early 1990s he started off on his own. He started the Compania de Vinos Telmo Rodriguez with his partner Pablo Eguzkiza in 1994. They first made Garnacha in Navarra. The wines were initially successful but without a strong financial backing, Telmo and his partner were forced to search out new and more obscure regions within Spain to continue their winemaking. Rueda came next for them and out of this the Basa wine project was born. Here is where the shift happened. Going against the trend of re planting foreign varietals, they focused on using native Spanish varietals and recovering old, forgotten vineyards. Working with local winemakers and grape growers they are gaining a lot of great respect within the international wine community.

Here are a few things that make Telmo Rodriguez wines unique…

All vineyards are biodynamically farmed
All vineyards are bush trained; traditional Spanish method
All varietals are traditional to their region
Replanting is only with Massal selections. Most traditional method of re-propagating a vineyard this process is essentially taking a neighbor vine and burying a shoot until a new vine forms.

These wines will be offered at a discounted rate all month!

Come check them out.

Nick Agnew
Wine Buyer