Bodegas Real Rubio

Cantina e Vini

The story of Viñedos Real Rubio began over one hundred years ago at the hands of our great grandparents, who began grape growing in the area around Monte Yerga, cultivating vines at a height of between 400 and 500 metres. Subsequent generations recognised the problems of the soil and climate conditions of those plots and expanded their property so as to follow the growing trend towards growing grapevines. To that generous legacy, we, Mari Luz and Javier, together with our children, have brought our own personal determination to preserve and widen it, through a family project leading to the creation of our winery, Viñedos Real Rubio, in 2004. These days, we have over 90 hectares of planted vines whose differentiating feature is the range of diversity of grape variety and the great age of many of them. Our vineyards are home to most of the official varieties of the Rioja Designation of Origin: Tempranillo, Garnacha, Graciano, Viura, Verdejo, … and, in addition, we have vines over 60 years’ old alongside other younger ones less than a decade old. This diversity, managed using novel, environmentally respectful growing practices which seek to extract the best qualities from each parcel, provides us with excellent raw material for turning into wine.

In Viñedos Real Rubio we have over 90 hectares of our own vines, which we cultivate according to a carefully studied plan. First, we decide which varieties we will grow in each plot depending on the soil and climate conditions, as well as the way the vines face, so as to shelter them from the wind or over-exposure to the sun. Among all these, if we consider the area planted with each grape, the most significant varieties are Tempranillo, occupying around 38 hectares, Garnacha, with 27 hectares and Graciano, with 17 hectares. And while the commitment to these more traditional Rioja varieties is one of the distinguishing features of Viñedos Real Rubio, we also have organic vines, to which we devote 26 hectares, in which we grow Verdejo, Graciano, Chardonnay, Tempranillo and Muscatel grapes. All the vines are cultivated according to growing practices aimed at achieving maximum quality in the grapes, as well as respect for the environment. With this as our goal, we do not use insecticides, which we replace with sexual confusion methods, and we use integrated crop control techniques so as to avoid the use of phytosanitary treatments as far as possible. Moreover, in some varieties, we follow practices which are not very common due to their cost, but which are highly effective, such as leaf thinning, in order to achieve a better balance between the skin and the juice in the berry, and thus improve the quality.