“When you bottle a wine, it’s a miracle that it’s even drinkable, because you have to make so many decisions, starting in the vineyard. Every decision is a chance to go wrong.” The words of Miguel Merino, leading winemaker in Rioja, who was in the UK recently to show his new releases.
Miguel Merino's love of wine came from his time living in London
It might seem obvious now that Miguel Merino would join his father’s eponymous bodega, but the road he took to get there has many twists and turns and is the story of a father and son, as much as of wine.
Miguel senior (both the protagonists in this story are, confusingly, called Miguel) had founded his winery in 1994, after an initial career exporting Spanish wine around the world. He turned winemaker and released his first wines in 2001.
The pretty village of Briones was chosen as a site for the winery - here the soils produce wines with delicacy, balance and acidity.
Miguel junior thought he wanted to be a sportswriter and initially studied journalism. But he quickly realised that he didn’t want to “write about Cristiano Ronaldo’s underwear” and left Spain for London. And it was there, rather than in Spain, that his enthusiasm for wine was sparked, remarking to friends that back home, that they might know wines from Rioja, but had never even tried a wine from neighbouring Navarra.
At the age of 23 he returned home and joined his father in Bodega Miguel Merino but, in his words, “for seven years I was the most unhappy person in the world”. He knew little about winemaking and found working in a family business far from straightforward. He embarked on winemaking studies and, at 30, started working for other wineries.
When Miguel senior was about to turn 70, he asked his son if he would return to work with him at the family domain. Despite a fear of returning to what had been a difficult situation, Miguel junior and his wife, Erika, joined the family business in the beautiful village of Briones, on the southern side of the river Ebro in Rioja Alta.
Merino says he is known as “the German” for his love of spreadsheets and order.
There were clearly differences in personality between the two Miguels. Junior says he is known as “the German” for his love of spreadsheets and order. His father, by contrast, was more Italian in nature: intuitive and last minute. Miguel senior died in 2021, but his son is grateful that his father was around for long enough to see his progress on the estate – and what he learned from him.
Miguel senior had chosen Briones as a site for the winery, in a typically intuitive way, because it was a pretty village and because he had learned that many larger producers said that their best grapes came from there. In his more analytical style, Miguel junior values the specific soils and terroir of Briones.
Here the soils have some limestone, but a higher proportion of clay, coupled with a consistent wind and many north/northeast-facing slopes. Together these factors make for wines with delicacy, balance and acidity.
His Rioja Blanco 2022 is a “white Rioja which is not a white Rioja”. The blend of mostly Viura with 30% Garnacha Blanca is richly expressive but tense, while the short time in barrel (just 10 months in French oak) allows the wine to show characteristic freshness, minerality and salinity.
In Miguel senior’s day, they produced fewer cuvées, focusing on Vitola Reserva, Miguel Merino Reserva and Gran Reserva. Miguel junior has added single vineyard wines (or at least “vineyard minded” wines). He also has moved the bodega on from “a classic big winery on a small scale” with just 1 ha of their own vines. Now they are moving to a grower model and work their almost 8 ha of vines organically.
Miguel has continued making the three classic wines made by Miguel senior, including Vitola Reserva 2019, despite his first instinct being to “kill it” when he took over. Now he embraces it as a contrast to the classic Miguel Merino Reserva.
Vitola results from a deliberate attempt to choose fruit from vines which give the lightest wines, resulting in a delicate and ethereal wine with a grainy sense of freshness. It is true to Miguel’s intention to “try not to use fireworks…whispering instead of shouting”.
The Miguel Merino Reserva 2018 shares a sense of that same freshness in what was a cool year in Rioja, but is his “most classic, canonic wine”. Both wines are a blend of 96% Tempranillo and 4% Graciano. While the Vitola is aged in almost all French oak, the straight Reserva spends two years in barrels with carefully chosen American staves (from a supplier in Wisconsin who produces “the only American oak I can stand”) and French heads. It makes for a powerfully elegant wine with velvety tannins and a lingering black tea flavour.
The last of the trio is Miguel Merino Gran Reserva 2018, again from that cooler, wetter year. The blend remains the same and the oak French. Miguel confesses that he finds most Gran Reservas “expensive and boring” flat wines with too much oak. Here he tries to balance the necessary tannicity of the wine with finely defined fruit. He memorably says that “tannins are a shelf where you put things” like aromas and flavours. This may be Miguel’s most tannic wine, but it exhibits a super smooth texture, incredible length and a palate that is complete but not crowded.
Miguel’s innovations include the 100% Mazuelo (Carignan) La Quinta Cruz 2021, planted in what he says is the only place in Briones where this variety will work. The cool soils struggle to ripen this most Mediterranean variety, but Miguel has decided to “let it be weird”. There is a herbal, but not green, quality here, along with dark chocolate and black plum fruit.
Miguel Merino La Insula 2021 is from 100% ungrafted pre-phylloxera Garnacha vines from a tiny plot of sandy soil close to the River Ebro. This is a special wine which had in the past been lost in a big blend, with the grower paid 76 cents per kilo. When the grower finally tasted the wine made from his vines, he apparently cried.
The elephant in the room when tasting Miguel’s wines is that his single vineyard La Loma 2021 has been awarded 100 points in Tim Atkin MW’s latest Rioja report. Miguel himself didn’t mention the perfect score, perhaps conscious that it can be a heavy burden for any wine to carry, but it is nevertheless a fine accolade.
The wine is a blend of 90% Tempranillo and 10% Garnacha Tinta from a 1.4ha vineyard which Miguel’s father bought just a few days before he died in 2021, after a 20-year wait to acquire it. The vineyard is a meeting of limestone with ferric clay, which combine to make a wine with a floral, delicate nose, giving way to an aromatic, silky and elegant palate with herbs, ripe black fruit and a hint of tomato leaf. Extraction is so gentle that Miguel says it is more of an infusion than a fermentation. It is a fitting tribute to Miguel senior’s intuitive vision, his son’s empathetic and careful approach to winemaking, and to Briones.
Miguel Merino wines are distributed exclusively in the UK by Davy’s Wine Merchants.
