Friday read: The rise of white Rioja

By Barnaby Eales

Published: 20 March, 2026

Exclamations of ¡Un vinazo! resounded into the evening at last week’s third annual edition of the ‘The Best of Rioja’ tasting held in London (9 March), with on-trend Rioja blanco stealing much of the limelight.

From the orange-coloured Phinca Hapa carbonic maceration wine to those made using cement eggs and Tinajas, together with oxidised sherry-esque wines, the tasting revealed the extent of the diversity of styles and quality of new wave white Rioja expressions. That diversity has spread into fine sparkling white wines such as the tantalisingly fresh and linear Pandemonium 2021 made by Vintae.

Much of the excitement surrounding Rioja Blanco is singularity. As Tom Mann director of Mann Fine Wine, says: “You just don’t know what to expect from each Rioja Blanco, you need to try each wine.”

Mann, who now imports the cult Rioja Alavesa white wines of Oxer Bastegieta, says customers are increasingly looking for alternatives to Burgundy. As the ‘Best of Rioja’ tasting showed, their quality-price ratio weighs far greater in their favour when compared to their Burgundy counterparts.

Read more: Salcombe Gin distiller aims to triple in size over next five years

White wines account for a record 24% of the ‘wines of the year’ in Tim Atkin’s Rioja Report 2026. Many of the fine dry Rioja Blancos shows the characteristic of chalkiness – whether subtle, or more pronounced, its invariably present.

“People tend to think the texture in our wines only comes from the tannins resulting from fermenting grapes on skins, but it’s the chalky characteristic provided by our soils which plays the biggest role in ensuring the fine texture of our wines,” says David Sampedro, winemaker at Bodegas Bhilar, a Demeter-certified producer of biodynamic wines located in Rioja Alavesa.

Faced with adverse climate conditions and the impact of rising alcohol levels and lower acidity levels in wines, Rioja producers are planting vineyards higher up along sites of the Sierra de Toloño-Cantabria Mountain range in the Rioja Alta and particularly in the Rioja Alavesa. In the latter, 90% of the soils are limestone-clay, with a high carbonate content imparting a distinctive character to wines, and Basque producers and authorities are taking measures to protect the genetic material and biodiversity of vines.

At the tasting, producer Ostatu unveiled its new Zabala (meaning open space), a tangy and bright white wine made from vines grown at over 600 metres above the village of Samaniego. (Bodegas Bhilar has planted vines high up as 900 metres.)

With white Rioja now in vogue in Spain, producers big and small have increasingly turned to making whites wines through the regrafting and replanting of white varieties. Mikel Ruiz de Viñaspre, a manager at Gomez Cruzado based in Haro, which producers the renowned Gómez Cruzado Montes Obarenes 2021, says white grapes increased to account for 33% of the company’s haul from the 2025 vintage. Gomez Cruzado’s new winery room featuring concrete vats (opening this April) will be partly used to ferment some of the white grapes.

Producer Loli Casado has resumed making white wines after stopping production in 2015 due to a lack of demand. Casado however, kept back vintages including the fine 2010 of the Jaun de Alzate Gran Reserva Cepas Viejas, showing the ageing ability of Viura (Macabeo). On show too, from the same vintage was the acclaimed 200 Monges Gran Reserva Blanco made from grapes grown high up in the Rioja Alta.

Over the past 26 years, David Sampedro, a pioneer of the white wine renaissance in Rioja Alavesa, has planted Garnatxa Blanca (and other undisclosed experimental white varieties). Whilst Bodegas Exeo’s Cifras Blanco shows how Garnatxa Blanca can work as a single varietal, Sampedro says the grape variety plays a key role in blends by providing aromatics and flavours to complement Viura, Rioja’s most widely planted white grape variety, mainly used to provide structure and ageing ability in wines.

“Of course, there are great 100% Viura whites, but for me the most interesting wines are co-fermented wines made from field blends of grape varieties,” Sampredo rounds up.

Picture: Chabola de la Hechicera, Rioja Alavesa, by PortalJardin, via Pixabey

Printer friendly version