Not yet 40, Jade Gross has already packed several careers into one lifetime. Before settling in Rioja to launch her own wine project, she built a career in fields as diverse as international relations and fine dining, reaching the highest levels.

Born and raised in Hong Kong to an American father and a Chinese mother, Gross studied Political Science and International Relations in New York before completing a master's degree in Human Rights in London. Yet she still felt she had not found her true calling. A scholarship from the prestigious James Beard Foundation enabled her to attend a leading culinary school in Paris, an experience that would prove a turning point in her career.

She worked in some of the world's most celebrated restaurants, including Alain Ducasse, El Celler de Can Roca and, ultimately, Mugaritz, where she became head chef and joined the restaurant's R&D team. "When I arrived, I fell in love with Andoni Luis Aduriz's philosophy and with the way the restaurant was organised. It's far more horizontal than hierarchical, and everyone's contribution is valued," she says in impeccable Spanish.

It was during her seven years at Mugaritz that she began to see wine through a different lens. The close relationship between food and wine, together with the friendship she developed with Abel Mendoza and Maite Fernández, eventually persuaded her to leave a promising career in haute cuisine and start again, this time as an outsider in the world of wine.

In 2019, she settled in San Vicente de la Sonsierra. That same year, she bought grapes from a local grower who was a friend of Abel Mendoza and made her first wine: a Tempranillo from La Liende, a site planted on gravel soils. More than 40 years old, that vineyard still supplies the fruit for Jade Gross Piano Piano (1,800 bottles; €50). Made from 90% Tempranillo with some Garnacha and Viura, it ferments with 30% whole bunches in open foudres before spending 12 months in a combination of new and used French oak barrels. The result is an expressive and beautifully balanced red. "If someone had told me when I joined Mugaritz that this is what I'd end up doing, I would never have believed them. I don't know where it will lead me, but I'm keeping going," says Gross, who also holds the WSET Diploma.

Encouraged by the success of that first label —featuring an illustration of vines transformed into piano keys, a nod to the instrument she plays— she bought a vineyard in San Ginés, near Labastida, in 2020. Sitting at around 650 metres elevation, the site has clay-limestone soils and an afternoon-facing aspect. This 40-year-old bush-trained Tempranillo vineyard is the source of Harrobia (quarry in Basque; 2,250 bottles; €59), a deep, elegant red with fine tannins and a long finish. Around 70% of the fruit is destemmed before fermentation in open-top tanks with two pump-overs a day for seven to eight days, followed by 12 months in barrel, 30% of them new.

The clay-rich section of the same vineyard provides the Tempranillo for Jabalina (1,280 bottles; €40), a rosé blended with 20% Garnacha from a plot acquired in 2024 in the San Andrés area of San Vicente de la Sonsierra. Made by direct pressing, it ferments and ages for seven months in new 500-litre oak barrels.

Although with equally limited production, Chiguita is her flagship white (3,800 bottles; €52). Creamy yet delicate, it is made from purchased fruit sourced from different villages, with the grape varieties changing according to the vintage. The 2025 release blends Viura and Garnacha Blanca from limestone soils in Labastida, a small proportion of Malvasía from Rivas de Tereso and Tempranillo Blanco from Alto Najerilla. The wine undergoes no malolactic fermentation and follows a similar ageing regime to the rosé, although Gross intends to extend the maturation of her whites to around 19 months.

Driven by the same desire to learn and refine her winemaking, she also produces three tiny single-variety microvinifications of Garnacha Blanca, Viura and Tempranillo Blanco —just 150 bottles of each— to observe how each variety evolves over time.

Another experimental playground is Corza Beoda (1,100 bottles; €30), where she works with varying proportions of whole bunches using Tempranillo and Garnacha from her own vineyards. Fermentation takes place in plastic fermenters and, instead of using free-run juice, she opts for press wine to add tannin, colour and to study its influence on the wine's ageing potential. The unusual name (drunken roe deer) came from a conversation with Javier Aramburu, who designs all her labels. Gross remarked on how roe deer devour grapes just as they reach perfect ripeness and joked that they might even get drunk. Hence the label depicting a roe deer relaxing in a jacuzzi that is, in fact, a plastic fermenter filled with grapes.

Peace, Love & Garnacha (2,200 bottles; €52) was initially made from purchased fruit from Cordovín but now comes exclusively from the sandiest section of her vineyard in San Vicente de la Sonsierra. It spends 12 months in barrel, while the proportion of destemmed fruit —usually between 80% and 90%— varies according to the vintage. Gross's aim is to produce a wine with gentle extraction that is fresh, floral and strikingly ethereal.

Time is on my Side (1,300 bottles, €64) is the latest addition to the range and, in Gross's own words, her most serious wine to date. It blends 90% Tempranillo with Graciano and a small proportion of white varieties as a tribute to the region's traditional field blends, where these grapes once grew side by side in the same vineyard. As she has yet to find the right site, the blend is assembled in the cellar using fruit from Harrobia alongside purchased grapes from Labastida. Fermented in a new 1,000-litre foudre, it receives a longer élevage than the rest of the range —a direction Gross intends to pursue more widely, convinced that her wines gain complexity with extended ageing.

Rather than producing magnum versions of every wine, she created Moon Rocket (€132), available exclusively in magnum, in both white and red.

Gross's wines are now sold in more than a dozen international markets, including Hong Kong, China, the United States and several European countries. In Spain, she works with a network of independent distributors who supported her from the outset, alongside Cuvée 3000, which handles distribution in Madrid and Barcelona.

After several years of making wine in borrowed cellar space at friends' wineries, Gross moved into her own practical, functional premises on an industrial estate in San Vicente de la Sonsierra in 2023. Her ambition remains unchanged: to build a deeply personal interpretation of the region, learning with every harvest while showing profound respect for both the land and the people who have welcomed her into it.