Why it matters
The producer
Bodegas Manzanos is one of Rioja's larger producers, and one of the few operating at that scale with a genuine specialist claim. The Fernández de Manzanos family founded the business in 1890 in Azagra, a town in Navarra close to the Rioja border, and built it across five generations until 2025, when French entrepreneur Michel Boutin acquired the group. The company now manages 1,525 hectares across two appellations: 950 hectares in Rioja DOCa and 575 in Navarra DO.
The winery the family eventually came to operate in Haro, the main commercial hub of Rioja Alta, is something else entirely. That building dates to 1801, making it the oldest winery in the city. It is not a converted farmhouse. The cellar runs through the underground stone galleries of Haro's medieval castle, and the Palacio de Tejada, a formal palace built in 1733, forms part of the same site. Gravity-flow equipment now handles the juice inside those vaulted galleries, pulling wine through crushing and fermentation without mechanical pumping.
Place and vineyards
Where the wines begin
Rioja DOCa divides into three sub-zones with different soils and climates, and the bottles that result read differently in the glass. Rioja Alta, where the Haro winery sits, is the coolest and highest of the three, shaped by Atlantic weather coming in from the northwest over the Cantabrian mountains. Altitude and cloud cover slow ripening and preserve acidity in the grapes.
Navarra DO adjoins Rioja to the northeast and shares some of the same Tempranillo-dominated planting, but the appellation has its own legal designation and produces wines labelled separately. Manzanos holds 575 hectares there, which is not a secondary holding at arm's length: it is a substantial part of the total operation, and Navarra DO wines appear in the range under their own appellation designation.
In the cellar
Vineyards and cellar
Tempranillo accounts for more than three quarters of the total growing area, which places Manzanos firmly within Rioja's dominant varietal logic. Tempranillo gives the region's classic red wines their dried cherry and earth character, their medium tannin, and their capacity for oak ageing.
Graciano is planted at a concentration no other single producer in Rioja can match. The variety is late-ripening and low-yielding, which is why the region has historically planted so little of it. Where Tempranillo gives roundness and approachability, Graciano brings higher acidity, darker fruit, violet perfume, and a frame that holds together over long ageing. In blending it reinforces freshness and aromatic lift. As a single-variety wine it gives a portrait of Rioja that most bottles in the region never attempt.
Wines to know
The range in view
Finca Manzanos is the estate label, drawing on fruit from owned vineyards and covering the main Rioja DOCa styles: red, white, and rosado at various ageing levels from Joven through to Reserva. The 1890 range sits at a premium position within the portfolio, referencing the founding year and signalling longer selection and cellar time. Voché is a further sub-range within the broader group.
Navarra DO wines from the southern holdings appear under their own appellation and represent a distinct part of the portfolio. Wines from Navarra carry a different origin, a different regulatory framework, and a somewhat different character from the same Tempranillo variety grown under Atlantic influence in Rioja Alta.
A useful way in
A bottle to begin with
Bodegas Manzanos owns 20 percent of all Graciano hectares planted in Rioja DOCa. Graciano from a producer holding one fifth of the region's total plantings is not an experiment or a limited release: it is a core expression of a deliberate long-term bet on the variety. The wine opens with blackberry and violet on the nose, moves into a mouth-filling combination of dark fruit and firm, high acidity, and closes long with herb and iron on the finish. There is enough tannin to support several years of further ageing but enough fruit to reward a bottle opened now with food.