Why it matters
The producer
Gonzalo Antón ran one of the Basque Country's most respected restaurants before he ever made wine. As owner of the Zaldiaran Restaurant in Vitoria, he had spent years thinking about what ended up in a glass. At 37, alongside business partners from Vitoria, he decided to make it himself. His family had grown grapes in Villabuena de Álava for generations; he chose the same hillside as the site and built a winery there in 1987.
The name Izadi is the Basque word for nature. It is a short declaration of intent: the estate would be grounded in its physical surroundings, not borrowed prestige. That philosophy showed early. In 1993, six years after founding, Izadi opened a restaurant and hotel on the winery site and began receiving visitors with guided tours. Wine tourism in Rioja is now standard practice; in 1993, it meant converting a production facility into a hospitality space before most producers had thought to do it.
Place and vineyards
Where the wines begin
Rioja Alavesa is the northernmost of Rioja's three sub-zones, pressed against the Sierra de Cantabria mountain range with the Ebro River to the south. The Basque Country border is close, and the sub-zone's wines carry that proximity: Tempranillo grown here tends toward lighter body and firmer acidity than the same grape grown in Rioja Alta or Rioja Oriental. Altitude and the mountain influence keep temperatures lower, slow ripening, and hold freshness in the fruit.
Villabuena de Álava sits at the foot of the Sierra de Cantabria. Izadi's vineyard parcels are clustered in a triangle between Villabuena, Samaniego, and Ábalos, all on the Sierra's foothills, with an average parcel size below 1.5 hectares. Small plots mean separate harvesting and separate handling, which is why the cellar matters as much as the map.
In the cellar
Vineyards and cellar
Izadi has access to 178 hectares of vines, 70 of which it owns, with the balance contracted from growers in the same triangle between Villabuena, Samaniego, and Ábalos. The small average parcel size gives the team flexibility to harvest plot by plot rather than zone by zone.
The winery was built into the hillside specifically to run on gravity. Grapes enter at the top level and descend through five production floors across 50 metres of elevation change, without pumps. The absence of pump pressure means skins and seeds are handled more gently, which has direct consequences for tannin extraction and fruit clarity in the finished wines.
Wines to know
The range in view
The range runs from a Garnacha rosé entry point through a Tempranillo Reserva to two elevated expressions: a single-vineyard red and a prestige rosé in magnum.
Larrosa Rosé is built entirely from Garnacha grown on high-altitude, old-vine parcels. The altitude slows ripening and sharpens acidity, producing a rosé with more energy than warmth, pale in colour, and driven by fresh red fruit rather than the richer, fuller character of lower-altitude Garnacha.
A useful way in
A bottle to begin with
La Gran Rosa is the right first bottle. It demonstrates what Izadi does that other Rioja estates do not: co-fermenting Garnacha Tinta and Garnacha Blanca, in magnum, from small hillside parcels, with the result aged on lees in barrel for texture. Salmon-pink in the glass, it opens with strawberry, currant, cherry blossom, and a sharp seam of citrus from the Garnacha Blanca. The palate is full without being heavy, refreshing without being light, and the lemon zest finish is long and clean. It is a rosé that takes an argument seriously.