![]() ![]() The individuality with which Arturo and Kike work is a long running thread through the de Miguel family’s history as winegrowers. Their focus is to capture the purest, most vivid expressions possible of the extraordinary terroirs they work, clustered around the towns of Baños de Ebro, Ábalos, San Vicente de Sonsierra and Samaniego, all north of the Ebro River. ![]() The de Miguel brothers reject the confines of Rioja’s classification system based on time and type of aging. That independent spirit is alive and well in the next generation now in charge of the domaine, Roberto’s sons Arturo and Kike (the name Artuke is a combination of their names). He hand-sold his wine door-to-door out of his van in the Basque Country as far as Bilbao. Thirty years ago, fourth-generation grower Roberto de Miguel stopped selling the wine he made from his Rioja Alavesa vineyards to Haro’s big bodegas and began bottling it himself. And some of the very best of these terroir-driven Riojas are being made by one of the movement’s pioneers, Bodegas y Viñedos Artuke. They are tended by a small group of intrepid viñadores intent on giving voice to the lands they work with as much clarity as possible. In others, new ground is broken, as the potential of a site not planted before is recognized. Their discovery and restoration has been a key element of this new grower terroir movement. In some cases these are ancient-vine sites, made possible by the region’s wealth of old vineyards, many of them long abandoned. ![]() And they are doing so using a very different approach-letting Rioja's individual terroirs speak for themselves, in small cuvées aged for a shorter time in neutral barrels. Recently, however, some of Rioja’s most gifted small growers have been producing equally compelling wines. Sourced from a multitude of vineyards, expertly blended and defined by long aging before release, they are among the world’s greatest wine treasures. The Gran Reservas of Rioja’s historic bodegas are models of harmony and complexity. ![]()
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