Roberto Oliván: “Rioja is heading for a major shake-up”

Without a master plan but with sheer determination, Roberto Oliván has spent the past 15 years building a project as distinctive as the landscape he crosses daily between Viñaspre and Lanciego in Rioja Alavesa.

Tentenublo began with a handful of family vineyards and, later, with those “scraps” of vines that nobody else wanted. Yet it soon became a benchmark among the new generation of Rioja growers at the dawn of the 21st century. With striking labels and wines full of personality, Oliván quickly stood out. Before long, this man —more at ease chatting with seasoned growers than leading a packed tasting— found himself at the centre of attention.

Now 43, he says he has learnt to handle notoriety, the business, and his emotions with more balance. He farms 16 hectares organically between Lanciego, where the winery is based, and Viñaspre, the hamlet where he lives with his wife Leyre —an essential part of Tentenublo— and their children.

A perfectionist and self-confessed vineyard obsessive, Roberto greets us just before harvest in one of his favourite living rooms: El Abundillano, a vineyard that produces a juicy single-plot Garnacha, part of El Escondite del Ardacho collection alongside Las Guillermas, Veriquete and San José. His range also includes four village and cosechero wines —Tentenublo red and white, Xérico and Custero— that faithfully convey the soul of his land. Across them all, one finds the maturity and freshness he seeks every vintage, as well as a commitment to steer clear of fashion and complacency.

How would you sum up these 15 years of Tentenublo?
A rollercoaster. I feel things very intensely, and that’s exactly how it’s been —at times I’ve felt on top of the world, at others completely weighed down, with plenty of tough days in between. Now we understand how the game works, but in the beginning it was pure madness. Not long ago I was talking about it with Vicky Torres, from La Palma: it felt as if we were living in some kind of fantasy. People called us, we were invited to the best places, we were on cloud nine… and we sold thousands of bottles almost without trying.

So you didn’t see it as a business?
Things were going so well it felt impossible to ever face stock or cash-flow problems. Now I’m fully aware that it’s not just a project —it’s a family and a business. You’re competing with wineries that have financial advisors and a vast organisation behind them, while you have to do everything yourself: grow grapes, store the wine, have things tied up in case it doesn’t sell as quickly as before… In short, you have to fend for yourself. (Pictured below in 2015 with Xurxo Alba, of Albamar)

And do you enjoy it less now than you used to?
These days, you know exactly where you need to be at any given time. Winemaking was never a dream for me —our family always had vineyards. Of course I was excited, but I didn’t have a grand plan; one day I simply said, “I’ll try making wine,” and it worked. When I started, I had no role models. Today, younger generations seem to have everything mapped out —they chase recognition and want to follow in the footsteps of established producers. For me, and for three or four peers of my generation I’ve spoken with, things just unfolded naturally.

Exposure is much greater now, I guess.
That constant exposure and immediacy has worn us down a little. Social media took off at the same time we did, and at first it helped. Now it’s different. You see people who stop doing their job just to be in the picture. I think that’s damaging, because in the end you realise you’re not important. You’re just a bloke making wine and selling it. And maybe in two years you’ll have to shut the winery because you’re broke. If that happens, you close, sell everything, and move on. That’s the mindset you need to make it work. Still, when I look back, I feel privileged.

What makes you feel privileged?
I’ve never had to go door-to-door selling bottles. For small producers, for village folk without a powerful family behind them, it’s a stroke of luck when a place opens its doors, gives you ten minutes to explain your project and buys a bottle —from a modest wine bar to a three-Michelin-starred restaurant. Every time I come back home after being in Madrid, Barcelona or at a fair, I think: I’m privileged. And I say it humbly, with my head down.

What kind of image do you think you project?
Some people may think I’m cockier than I really am. I’ve heard it many times, but the truth is almost nobody really knows me. My close circle is very small, and it keeps getting smaller. But what I can assure you is that I’m not a bad person.

Can a bad person make good wine?
If you’re a bad person, you’ll use every trick and technique at your disposal to achieve it. That wine might be well made, but it will never be honest or true. That person will never admit they bought grapes or that they cut corners. A good person will. Good people have craft; bad people don’t.
If you’re bad, you’re obsessed with money —and the more you obsess, the less you sell and the more mistakes you make.

What are you proudest of in your career?
Of having patience and learning my craft. I know how to graft, prune, plough, drive a tractor, sell… I’ve learnt everything along the way. When you start, the calls come, but you need to take it step by step: maybe sell grapes, maybe sell bulk wine just to get into the business. It’s crucial to understand the business and get your hands dirty: knowing who’s selling vineyards, the price of bulk wine, how to navigate that world.

Now you produce around 40,000 bottles. Is that a figure you feel comfortable with?
I don’t want to grow further or shrink, though we’ve had bad years. Hail or drought has brought us down to 20,000 or 30,000 bottles. In the fast years, like 2016, and later 2018 and 2020, we hit 60,000 because the harvest was good. I’m not into fancy cars or travelling, so everything we’ve earned has gone back into the winery and vineyards. We’ve built up a significant mass of vines and, depending on the vintage, we sell some grapes. We average about 5,000 kg/ha; with 10 hectares, some years I have a surplus. In that case, I sell what I like less —and I sell it well. At the end of the day, this is a working farm.

And is that balance the key to keeping your project sustainable?
It means we can run the business as it stands now. In these tough times, you see wineries that are overstaffed —if sales drop 30%, you suddenly have 30% too many employees. At Tentenublo, no one is ever surplus. We’re three, and it’s just right to make 40,000 bottles. If one year we do 45,000, great; if it’s 35,000, that’s fine too. That’s why Tentenublo works —and it’s also the essence of the cosechero model: you do everything yourself, but you need a steady income to cover fixed costs. Anyone who thinks they can survive with 5,000 bottles is dreaming. I learnt that very early on.

So how do you keep a cosechero business going over time?
With work, work, and more work. Few employees, hands-on management, and spending your days in the vineyard and winery.

And can you sell without travelling?
If I travel a lot, I sell more, but I also spend more, and then I need to generate more. That means hiring someone else and then travelling even more to sustain the structure. For instance, a trip to Madrid costs €500. Go every month, and that’s €6,000 a year. If you stay home and travel only two or three times a year for specific things, and manage your client portfolio well, you move from chasing sales to having people come to you. It may sound boastful, but it isn’t. Making first contact without leaving home is worth a lot. I’ve never been to New York, Panama or Greece —and yet I sell there. Of course, you still have to earn continuity.

How have you managed to secure that continuity?
I think it helped that we were a new name at a time when there weren’t so many projects around. On top of that, I’ve always had a transparent personality: I didn’t owe anything to anyone, and I wouldn’t let myself be pushed around. When you are genuine, it’s hard to be pushed aside. That’s why some very important restaurants tell me: “I work with you because I know your wines are consistent.”

In fact, you sell directly to many restaurants without intermediaries.
Rekondo, Casa Julián, Cork, Sagardi… they buy straight from us. I never say my wines are good; I say they’re personal, and that you always know what’s inside. That’s one of the reasons we’re still selling. Jonatan [García] of Suertes del Marqués puts it very well: you have two options —be a fad or be a ‘never miss’. You have to be a ‘never miss’.

Who is a never miss in Rioja?
Arturo [De Miguel] of Artuke. Every time you drink Pies Negros, you know what’s in that bottle. Others, one year they’re X and the next they’re Y, and it’s chaos. Why doesn’t Arturo fail? Because he works his vineyards and oversees everything. Just like some French producers: they live austere, sacrificed lives dedicated to their vines. That’s why I chuckle when I hear about producers who travel endlessly and then say, “What wines so-and-so makes!” And I think, have you ever asked yourself why you’re not making wines like that? Maybe because you don’t live the life that person does.

Have you changed your winemaking approach over these 15 years?
No, the style has always been the same. I’ve always been crystal clear on that.

But now, for instance, you use more concrete.
Yes, because I have more money, which allows me to invest in equipment and vineyards. At the beginning it was all very precarious: hardly any investment, a basic destemmer, no decent tanks… As you invest, your style sharpens because you have a proper destemmer, good tanks and quality barrels. I only started to refine my viticulture when the project began to do well.

You’ve changed your methods, but not your style.
My style has always been about maturity and freshness; the two must go hand in hand. And that’s possible here in Rioja Alavesa: with its limestone soils, elevation, and ripening grapes to the fullest, then holding everything together.

Have you ever been tempted to make lighter wines?
No, but I’ve never gone in for overripe wines either. My wines have plenty of structure and acidity. If you’re in a place with strong Mediterranean influence, very warm, you can still make a fresh wine, but with warmth. Otherwise you lose character. I think nowadays, with social media, the ease to travel and the numerous opportunities to taste so many wines, people end up very contaminated.

And how do you avoid that contamination?
Everything we drink are bottles we buy and enjoy at home. I don’t go to tastings. I’ve travelled to Italy, France or Portugal, and I’ve met producers. I always brought back ideas on management, business, winery operations, vineyards. As for style, I drink the wines and enjoy them, but I never try to replicate them —you lose too much personality. Now you see people making “Burgundy style” wines in Albacete, Galicia, Ribera del Duero and Rioja. We’re in the middle of a second homogenisation of taste.

What do you mean by that?
In the past, it was “200% oak” that made everything taste the same; now it’s lightness, often confused with greenness. I’m in a place that demands wines with structure —because the soil is limestone and we have both Mediterranean and Atlantic influences. Could I make lighter wines? Of course, tomorrow if I wanted. But the grapes wouldn’t taste as they should. And without structure, wines can’t age.

I recently tasted a 2014 Tentenublo red, and it was still in great shape.
I know my wines, both the entry-level and the single-vineyard bottlings, last more than 10 years in bottle. Recently we held a little party in the txoko to celebrate Tentenublo’s 15th anniversary and opened a Paredes and an Abundillano 2013 that were stunning. Even a Tentenublo 2011, our very first vintage, was glorious.

Your 2014 Údico txakoli, aged in chestnut barrels, marked a path others have since followed. Will you ever revive that project?
At that same txoko gathering we opened a magnum of Údico, and it was in great form, but that stage is closed. That experience helped me learn how to deal with diseases like mildew, which has been rife in Rioja this year, but I’ll never make txakoli again. My project is Tentenublo.

Both the Údico and the Tentenublo labels broke the mould. Have they helped to express your personality and sell wine?
When we started, nobody knew us, and the labels designed by Sergio [Aja, owner of Calcco] were a major investment but helped enormously.
At first glance Tentenublo looks playful, but behind that label lies a deeply rooted village story. The same with Xérico: all my labels carry weight and seriousness. Sergio always says a label only lasts 10 years, but we’re already at 15. We’ve only made small tweaks. The fact is you could have the best wine in the world, but if the presentation is sloppy, it won’t work.

What would you say to a young grower thinking of moving from selling grapes to becoming a fully-fledged winegrower?
Right now, it’s really tough for two reasons. First, the market isn’t welcoming new projects: consumption is down, distributors are struggling, and it’s hard to get anyone to back a new brand unless there’s someone truly exceptional behind it.
Second, we live in an incredibly fickle market. Social media gives you that first spark —everyone wants to try what they’ve just seen— but after they’ve tasted it, they tick it off and move on. That’s why I’d say: be patient and focus on the work. Don’t expect instant recognition, or imagine that big names will be knocking on your door to taste your wines after your second vintage. It’s better to build slowly and steadily. I was lucky enough to get a bit of help at the start.

Who helped you?
There were two or three people who backed me from the beginning. I made sure they had everything they needed and they sold the wines. Lluís Pablo [his distributor in Barcelona, who passed away in 2019] was key. He taught me to stay calm: “Don’t worry, we’ll do the work. There’s no rush to attract media attention or to have critics taste your wines,” he’d say. And he was right. When you’re making just 3,500 bottles, it’s like firing a shot into the air.

Even so, you went from 3,500 to 30,000 bottles in just a few years.
Yes, things took off far too quickly. It happened to many of my peers who started out around the same time. None of us wanted it to grow that fast, but it did. In fact, the tax authorities almost shut Tentenublo down because our turnover jumped from €30,000 to €200,000 and they suspected it was a phantom winery. One day an inspector turned up, but when he saw real activity and more than just a couple of barrels, he realised it was a proper business. Those were years when everything sold in a flash.

What’s it like living in such a small place like Viñaspre?
Professionally, it works for me. I couldn’t imagine Tentenublo being based in Logroño, even if it’s only 10 kilometres away. Some growers live in the city and drive up every day, but I need to be here, to see things daily. On the other hand, it’s tough: you always see the same 20 people. And we’re witnessing the decline of rural life.

That’s something that worries you, isn’t it?
Yes. I talk about it a lot with Arturo [de Miguel, of Artuke]. We were the last to see the good years, when the village was buzzing, grape prices were high, and everyone worked the land. Now we’re seeing the other side, and it hurts to watch it disappear.
I get frustrated that so much has been said about “empty Spain” —and I include myself— about how small wine projects would revitalise rural areas, but the truth is, we’ve done nothing to make that happen. It’s been used as a marketing tool to sell projects and bottles. With a few exceptions, no one has really tried to employ local people, invest in the villages, or live in them. And the younger generation is repeating the same pattern.
If the landscape isn’t maintained, it will end up belonging only to deer and wild boar. You need a deep sense of rural responsibility to sustain it, and that’s in short supply.

So the odds are stacked against rural life prospering?
Yes. But it also depends on how you want to live. I could have bought a flat above the winery in Lanciego, which has 600 inhabitants, but instead I built my house in Viñaspre. We try to live simply, without showing off: we shop at the local greengrocer, have coffee in the village bar, and live like the people here. The rural projects that thrive in places like Jura and elsewhere in France are run by people who remain deeply rooted in the countryside.

Would you like your children to follow in your footsteps?
Yes, I won’t deny it. Aimar, the younger one (pictured with his sister Ángela and Oliván), loves all this, but who knows. We show both of them the good and the bad. If they choose to stay, they need to understand the reality of rural life. It’s nice to see the romantic side, but they also need to know what a kilo of grapes costs and be aware that not everyone around us has the same privileges.

Over the past 15 years, there’s been a lot of public investment in Rioja Alavesa. Has it been well managed?
Until three years ago, I never applied for any grants. Other winemakers would say, “You’re mad! If you don’t apply, someone else will take it.” When we did some building work at the winery, the money came in very handy, but I think grants should come with stricter conditions. For example, requiring that most employees live in the village, so the benefits stay local. At the moment, much of the money goes to infrastructure, tanks, machinery… but some recipients haven’t yet proven themselves. Instead of inflating that bubble, more should go into training or marketing. In any case, 70% of subsidies go to the big players, and most of their employees live outside the villages.

You started out in El Collado, a cluster of small garage wineries in Laguardia.
That place is a gem. Projects like Guardianes del Reyno, Basilio Izquierdo, Magaña are there… El Collado should be run as an incubator by the Basque Government or the provincial authorities. Anyone applying for a start-up grant should first work there, producing no more than 10,000 bottles. If the project works, then they should get support to set up a winery in their village. It could have shared equipment and staff. If after three years the project is viable, then give a substantial grant to help it settle.

How are vineyard prices in Rioja Alavesa now?
Prices have fallen because we make a product that doesn’t seem to be in demand. It’s easier to buy grapes than maintain vineyards, which require constant investment: between €3,000 and €4,000 per hectare per year. If you’ve got 20 hectares, that’s €60,000–€80,000. If bottles don’t sell, why keep the vines?
Here, in Viñaspre, that was never among the most expensive, a hectare cost €80,000 just a couple of years ago; now it’s selling for €30,000. I’d never seen anything like it. I think we’ll see people abandoning their vineyards because they can’t sell them.

And how do you see the short- to medium-term future?
I think there’ll be a major shake-up. Some people will do very well: they’ll have lots of hectares and make standard products. Others, like me, will continue making more artisanal wines. Those producing top-quality, high-priced wines will survive, as will those making very correct wines at very low prices. But the middle ground —the crianzas and reservas that aren’t well made and compete with many other regions— will disappear.

And the big corporations?
They don’t care about the region. They come in, buy, make money, and leave. Do they clean things up? Yes, but they have no social weight and no interest in the community. They’re looking for profit, and if they don’t find it, they sell and move on. I, on the other hand, can never leave, because this is my land.

Whether or not that shake-up happens, the region still has strong appeal.
In the last three years, wine tourism has turned it into a sort of Disneyland. On Saturdays, Laguardia is packed and the roads are gridlocked. It’s low-cost tourism: people come for the day, spend little, and head off to Logroño or Bilbao. They don’t care whether the wine is good or bad, as long as the glass is full. We have a stunning landscape, but the downside is that it attracts a very superficial kind of tourism.

Has being a free spirit caused you trouble?
Yes, because I take things personally. But maybe I’m not really a free spirit —maybe I’m a slave to this place, and that’s why I keep being who I am. That attachment shapes a lot of my decisions, for better and worse. People often tell me I’m successful, but I don’t equate success with this.

So what does success mean to you?
I don’t know. For some, it’s a flashy car or social status. I try to think about what success really is. Sometimes it feels as though what others have shines brighter than what we’ve achieved ourselves —maybe because everything has happened too fast and we haven’t appreciated it fully.

Perhaps success is simply doing what you love every day.
When I was starting out and visitors came to the winery, my father would ask, “So, did they buy any wine?” And I’d say: “No, they came to see me.” He couldn’t understand it.
Now, when I talk to potato or cereal farmers on the other side of the mountain, I say to myself: they live like me, they may even have more assets, but no one lends them a microphone like you’re doing with me now. In the end, we’re all doing the same for the landscape: working the land, transforming a product, and selling it.

But wine has preserved a historic vineyard heritage and a strong identity. Cereal crops are much more industrialised.
Yes, but they were forced into it by the system. Not long ago, I went to Lera restaurant in Zamora province and saw villages like mine run by a single person, pushed into industrialisation. Is that farmer any less important to the rural world and society than I am? Clearly not.

Despite your free spirit, you joined the Subsierra association. Why?
For me, it’s a working tool. But more than a commercial movement, I see it as a social one. We share common problems: abandonment, lack of labour, the image of the region, the social fabric in the villages. We try to respond through training and promotion, and we also look after the relationship between members.

Pablo Franco is now general director of the Rioja Board and Alejandra Rubio has taken over as technical director. What do you make of these changes?
I’ve always had a good relationship with Pablo. Whenever I’ve had a problem, we’ve solved it constructively. From a technical point of view, there’s more willingness to help, and they’re open to change.
Now isn’t the time for politicking or arguments —it’s time to work together to face the challenges in Rioja. Pablo knows he needs to get closer to the small producers and those working in a more reductive style. He accepts criticism and stays on top of everything. And Alejandra will do a great job; she proved herself when she worked as an inspector.

What would you ask of this new management team?
That they listen to us and understand there are many ways of working. The rules can’t be so rigid. If differentiation is allowed, there will be more consensus. But we also need to understand that our role is to oversee the Board, not the other way round. Inspections are for everyone’s benefit. The problem here is that no one tells the doctor the truth: if no one cheated, things would be fantastic. But overall, there’s quite a lot of dishonesty, and we pay the price for it.