Telmo Rodríguez is one of the most renowned winemakers in Spain and is well-known around the world.

He took his first steps in the world of wine in La Rioja, where he helped his family’s winery Remelluri produce one of the D.O.’s first vinos de pago, a high quality wine made with grapes from a specific vineyard. This was a radical step forward in a D.O. so fond of mixing and matching varieties, and Telmo went on to reinvigorate the winery and turn it into one of the most important names in Spanish wine in the eighties and early nineties.

His worldly, cultured family background has given him an education quite unlike that of most Spanish winemakers, which has allowed him to pick up other languages (in addition to his mother tongue, Basque) with relative ease and to feel right at home as he travels around the world. He soaked up the French way of working with wines in Bordeaux and he has forged strong links with some of the finest wines his Gallic neighbours have to offer.

Telmo has long been thought of as the enfant terrible of Spanish wine, an image that has endured over time thanks to his eternally youthful style. His love of surfing, something of an addiction for those who grow up by wild seas like the Cantabrian, has undoubtedly also played a part, giving him ample opportunity to brave the waves in the beautiful Basque city of San Sebastian, just a stone’s throw away from Remelluri’s base in Rioja Alavesa.

Thus began a hunt for terroirs whose first big success was Molino Real, a sweet Moscatel that has given a new lease of life to the steeply sloping vineyards of Axarquía in Malaga, where winemaking was no easy task and really only for true lovers of lost terroirs, and where the finished product went against the current trend for hearty reds.

But there’s more to it than that. “We wanted to produce a lot of wines,” said Telmo. “Instead of making just one good wine, it was more important for us to make several that would lead us to one great wine in the future.”

Today the company produces wines in La Rioja, Ribera, Toro, Rueda, Alicante, Navarra, Cigales, Malaga, Madrid, Avila, Galicia, and is also working on a project in the Douro in collaboration with Dirk Van Niepoort. But many of its wines are particularly affordable whites and reds that sell for less than ten or even six euros, which may be something of a disappointment for those who expected a truly great “Great Wine”. The majority of them are destined for export, always with highly original labels that reflect many of the cultural interests of the man who has become, arguably, the busiest flying winemaker in the Iberian Peninsula.

“We’ve never thought of going abroad,” he stresses. “We believe that for a project to be solid and consistent, you need to have one very clear idea. And ours was to rehabilitate Iberian vine stock. We’ve been offered a lot of projects abroad but we’ve never even looked into them; we’re just not interested.” That’s why Telmo Rodríguez’s image is more closely linked to a lot of hard work on the road and many hours behind the wheel of his car, rather than that of the sophisticated flying winemaker bent over his laptop on eternal transatlantic flights.

Achievements and disappointments
What’s been the best Telmo Rodríguez wine so far? “Molino Real (Málaga) and Altos de Lanzaga (La Rioja) are the two wines we’re trying to develop and take further. I think the company’s most interesting and original product is Altos de Lanzaga. For those who think of us as people who discover new terroirs, it’s paradoxical that the wine from La Rioja should be the most intense.”

Indeed, Telmo Rodríguez seems to be struggling against the major trends in Spanish winemaking. He is more admired abroad than at home in Spain; he seeks out small vineyards; he produces many wines where price is the main factor and just a few that are up there with the great Spanish wines. Lately, as his interest in biodynamics has grown and he has started to become more philosophical about wine, he has grown indignant that, more and more, all fine wines are now more or less alike, instead of reflecting the idiosyncrasies of the land that produces them. And he is especially irritated by the fact that there seems to be such a rapid turnover of “hits” in Spanish circles, while historical wines and vineyards have been all but forgotten.

But does Telmo Rodríquez have doubts, and does he feel a little lonely in his search for terroirs? What would he say to those who doubt the validity of his concept to convince them that a terroir can produce a great wine? “I’d just tell them to try a bottle of Montrachet.”

One final question: what has wine given Telmo Rodríguez and what has Telmo Rodríguez given to wine? “Wine has given me inebriation. And I’ve given wine time, a lot of passion and a sense of humour.”