Víctor Ausejo spends most of his days in the vineyards and in the small bodega he owns in Alberite, seven kilometres south of Logroño, where he lives with his family. Like other places close to the capital of La Rioja, this village of just 3,000 inhabitants has grown in population, but it still retains part of its rural essence, thanks to its tradition of fruit and vegetable growing in the lower part of the valley, next to the river Iregua, and its vineyards, which are mainly used for home consumption.
Tempranillo is the main grape variety in this village in Rioja Oriental, on the boundary with Rioja Alta, but it is conspicuously absent from Ausejo's wines. "It ripens well in the Sonsierra, where temperatures vary between day and night, but with climate change it is a complicated grape in places like Alberite, at 440 metres elevation," explains the 41-year-old producer.
It was his father, Antonio, an expert on Rioja vineyards, who convinced him in 2014 to uproot the Tempranillo vines and plant Garnacha Blanca at El Peinao, a vineyard at 560 metres elevation on the road between Alberite and the picturesque village of Clavijo. Until that year, Víctor worked as a plumber and only occasionally helped out in the family vines, but a crisis in his sector led him to study viticulture and oenology at the Laboral de Logroño.
"Although my father worked as an agricultural engineer at Vivanco until he retired, I had never liked viticulture, but I wanted to change careers and I got the bug during my studies," admits Víctor, who went on to train in the vineyards at Vivanco and later at Gómez Cruzado, where he met Miguel Merino. Today, the Briones producer, whom Víctor considers his mentor, is one of his best friends in Rioja.
"My father didn't want me to grow Garnacha Blanca to vinify it, as I had little experience in the business, but to sell it to another winery; he thought there would be more demand for it, and he was right," he explains. In 2016, shortly before the birth of their eldest son, Ausejo and his wife planted this white variety in the two-hectare vineyard that bears grandfather Fermín's nickname, El Peinao, due to his fame as a vain man in Alberite.
When the Clavijo vineyard was planted, there were barely 50 hectares of Garnacha Blanca in the entire appellation. Today, there are around 250, but according to the Control Board, this local variety accounts for just over 4% of all white grapes in Rioja - behind Verdejo and Sauvignon Blanc - and an insignificant 0.38% of the total.
With a little sand on the surface and clay and calcium carbonate in the subsoil, the vines that Antonio bought from a nursery in Navarra, from a selected Remelluri clone, have adapted perfectly, explains Víctor. For the first vintage, 2018, he bought a barrel and filled 300 bottles to drink at home, but Miguel Merino convinced him to sell it. Although the vines were only two years old, the wine was very balanced, the Briones producer told him. "Instead of selling it to friends, I filled my backpack with bottles and offered the Garnacha Blanca to the best restaurants in Rioja, and I was so lucky that they all took it," Víctor recalls. 'The following year I started working with a distributor and in 2019 I made two barrels."
In 2020 he released his third vintage of Víctor Ausejo Garnacha Blanca, plus another unoaked wine (his first Parcela 333), and international recognition followed. Tim Atkin described his youngest wine as 'the white discovery of the year' and, according to Víctor, this helped him get calls from importers.
In 2024, with all his bottles sold, he has room to grow, but he prefers to take it one step at a time. El Peinao has two hectares, although he only bottles 40%, selling the remaining 60% to Izadi for their Larrosa white. "They contacted me in 2018 and offered me a contract for several years with a good price for the grapes. In 2020, some growers here got €0.50 for their white grapes; I was paid twice that," Ausejo confesses.
Given that the yield of white grapes is around 30% higher than that of red grapes per hectare, it is understandable that more and more growers in the area have decided to grow Garnacha Blanca. "In the past it was used as a secondary variety, but now it is more appreciated because it has a low pH, good acidity and is good against drought," says Ausejo. "It is also a local variety here and feels more genuine than Chardonnay or Sauvignon Blanc."
Trellised and organically farmed, El Peinao is a gentle, well-ventilated east-west slope. At the top of the hill, the fruit is riper and more concentrated, so these grapes go into his deep and complex Víctor Ausejo Garnacha Blanca (2,000 bottles, €30), fermented and aged on the lees for 10 months in 500-litre French and Hungarian barrels, with weekly battonage. The grapes from the valley bottom, where there is more water and the grapes have very good balance, go to Parcela 333 (3,300 bottles, €18), a fresh and varietal white that develops nice hydrocarbon notes with time in the bottle. In this case, the fermentation and ageing on the lees for eight months is done in concrete (80%) and stainless steel (20%) tanks.
He is clear about the white wines he pursues. "I try to make austere but expressive and balanced wines; I don't like whites with an exuberant nose, I prefer wines with few elements, that don't distract or detract," says Víctor, who doesn't mind admitting that he uses selected yeasts. "With white wines you have to be very meticulous in all the processes and I have learnt from the best in this category, who in my opinion is David González" (former technical director of Gómez Cruzado, now at Viña Salceda).
Having proved to himself and the world that he could make good white wines, Ausejo decided to explore red wines in 2021, so he bought grapes from the Iregua Valley, within a 10km radius of the winery. All the plots are from trusted growers, but for now they farm their vineyards with conventional methods. "They are gradually changing and no longer use herbicides, but even if you pay good prices for the grapes, it's hard for them to give up some of the practices that are deeply rooted in the area," says Víctor. "However, quality is essential if we want Rioja to move upwards. We have already seen that quantity is not an option."
As with the whites, he accurately defines the style of reds he seeks: with tension and fine tannins, sacrificing structure if necessary, and avoiding extraction, especially with the Mazuelo variety. "My favourite wines are white and the reds that resemble the whites," says Víctor, who currently produces 4,000 bottles of red and 6,000 bottles of white.
Planted in 1950 in Sojuela, a cool area of Rioja Alta, Los Pepones was the first red Garnacha vineyard he acquired. It's 0.36 ha of goblet vines, some of them with layerings (shoots that are buried so that they can develop roots and produce a new plant). All of the plants are slender and well protected from the direct summer sun by a green mantle of leaves. On the same left bank of the Iregua River, a grape grower from Alberite told him about his Garnacha Tinta vineyard planted in 1952 in Sojuela, at almost 800 m elevation and surrounded by forest. When he went to see it, he immediately fell in love with it and since then he has been buying this Garnacha and the few white vines scattered around in the vineyard.
From these two plots in Sojuela, plus another nearby, the Alberite producer makes his Víctor Ausejo Garnacha Tinta (1,700 bottles, €40). It has some stems, but most of the grapes are destemmed and not crushed. It is then fermented and aged in French and Hungarian barrels of various sizes and a foudre. As with the rest of his wines, he uses sulphur and corrects the acidity if necessary. "The style is a blend of Garnacha from Yerga and Alto Najerilla, because it has freshness, a hint of menthol and structure, without being too powerful. The soil in this area, at the foot of the Moncalvillo peak, is sandy with clay, so I get elegance and structure," explains Víctor.
Although it only represents 1.68% of all the grapes planted in Rioja, another of the red varieties that Víctor likes best is Mazuelo because it is late ripening and drought resistant. In Alberite, Víctor buys all the grapes from La Colorada, a 30-year-old vineyard of over just half a hectare where in 2023 he only harvested 2,200 kg. "This variety is very sensitive to powdery mildew, but it produces small, very dark, super-concentrated grapes that produce wines with very fine tannins."
With grapes from La Colorada and Garnacha from Los Pepones, Víctor makes a dark-coloured bled rosé with a very limited production (400 bottles, €18). From 2021, the rest of the Mazuelo goes into his single varietal (1400 bottles, €28), which is made from destemmed grapes without crushing, without allowing the alcoholic fermentation to finish in order to avoid extraction, and malolactic fermentation in used French and Hungarian oak barrels, plus a foudre since the 2023 vintage. It is a fresh, crisp and savoury wine, with a dark background but without the pronounced rustic character that Mazuelo sometimes has, and with pleasant, well-integrated tannins.
Victor was convinced that his priority was to obtain good grapes, but as the project grew and generated income, he was able to leave his job as a consultant at Bodegas Puelles (Ábalos) and transform his grandfather's garage into a small winery in 2021. But it is still a modest project. "The work here is very artisanal: my wife and I do the bottling, corking and labelling by hand, and my sister Diana is in charge of social media and exports."
The good reviews and Diana's efforts have resulted in 60% of the bottles being sold outside Spain and a one-year waiting list for the wines. "That's one less thing I have to worry about. Marketing is the biggest obstacle for many wine producers and I have to admit that I have landed on my feet in this respect," he says.
Now, with 10,000 bottles in production, he is considering expanding into the adjacent premises, although for now he prefers to control costs and wait.
It is just one of his goals, because Víctor's head is always buzzing with ideas, but he has also learnt to slow down. "I like immediate results, but I have gradually learned that wine requires patience and serenity," he admits. Miguel Merino has been a great help in this process of self-improvement. "When I met him I was very pushy and he always told me to be calm. He is an incredible guy who has encouraged me from day one and I have been lucky to meet him in my life."
His ambitions for the next few years include releasing wines with a bit more bottle-ageing and making a white for cellaring with five years of ageing in oak and bottle. In the meantime, he wants to improve what he already has. "There is still a lot to do: I think we can reinterpret the sites better, improve the viticulture and maybe one day buy old vineyards and realise the enormous potential of the Iregua Valley."
