In 1987, when Mario Rotllant came to La Rioja, he was determined to put his dream of establishing his own bodega into practice. His objective was clear from the start: to make a unique Rioja, different from the rest. His enthusiasm quickly spread to his team who became the backbone of the project: Agustín Santolaya, who took the reins, Isidro Palacios, who took care of the vineyards and Carlos Díez, who handled the oenology and the bodega. Currently Bodegas Roda wines are drunk in more than 50 countries around the world.

They chose Haro, the birthplace of wines under QDO Rioja, to start their project. They established themselves in the neighbourhood of ‘la Estación’ (the Station) and built an unparalleled bodega, a cross between the traditional deep hollows dug into the rock and the most cutting-edge technology. Unfortunately, the choice of soils was more difficult. Their idea was to generate their grape yield from one single estate, in the French “châteaux” style, but there were no estates to be found that had all of the characteristics they were looking for. Finding the right vines, as well as studying the soils and the landscape, took many months of analysis. In the end, they chose 17 different plots for their vineyards with common characteristics: old deeply rooted vines in poor soils with a great vine-growing tradition, each individually capable of producing great wines.

With the River Ebro winding its way in capricious curves at the foot of the vineyards, the Obarenes hills to the fore and the sierra de Cantabria to the east, these three natural elements are key factors in the region’s climatological make-up: Mediterranean, Continental and Atlantic, three climates for the same vineyards. This diversity of climates, together with the different levels of sun exposure on the hills that form the region, is one of the aspects that forge Bodegas Roda’s character.

The vines they chose were also something out of the ordinary. At a time when most bodegas were opting for young vines, Agustín Santolaya and Isidro Palacios made the sturdy decision to work with old vines. The chosen vineyards were more than 30 years old with very low yields, exactly what they were looking for: plants with long roots deeply embedded in the soil, extracting mineral nuances that they could never obtain from young vines.

Consequently, almost 10 years of hard work were necessary before the first wine worthy of the Roda name saw the light of day; the year was 1996. Nowadays Bodegas Roda wines are among some of the best wines in the world according to the most important national and international experts, as acknowledged by the US publication ‘Wine Review Online’ and the German edition of ‘Gault Millau’. ‘Roda’ (known as ‘Roda II’ up until the 2001 vintage), ‘Roda I’ and ‘Cirsion’ are the three crown jewels of a bodega that exports 50 percent of its produce to more than fifty countries, the most important being: the US, the United Kingdom, Switzerland, Germany, Puerto Rico, Mexico, Colombia and Brazil.