Why it matters
The producer
Félix Martínez Lacuesta was a lawyer and journalist before he was a winemaker. He founded the bodega in Haro in 1895, and over the following years his five brothers joined him to form a company. The house became a supplier to Spain's Royal Household. More than 130 years later, around 60 shareholders hold stakes in the operation, five family members remain actively involved, and the bodega still sits in Haro, the town that the railway made into Rioja's wine capital in the nineteenth century.
The range covers every tier of Rioja's maturity ladder. The facilities, rebuilt and inaugurated in 2011, span more than 16,000 square metres with underground cellars integrated into the vineyard slope for natural temperature regulation. What makes Martinez Lacuesta editorially unusual is not the red wine programme but what sits alongside it: a vermouth that has been produced since 1937, made from the bodega's finest wines rather than its surplus, and still sold under the same formula today.
Place and vineyards
Where the wines begin
Haro is Rioja Alta's commercial and winemaking centre, built up around a railway junction that allowed Bordeaux merchants and Spanish producers to move wine efficiently north into France. The town sits at the western end of the Rioja Alta sub-zone, where the Atlantic weather system from the Cantabrian mountains moderates what would otherwise be a hotter, drier inland climate. That moderation keeps acidity higher and slows ripening, which is why Rioja Alta producers have historically aged their wines longer before release: the fruit comes in with more acid to support the barrel time.
The 60 estate-owned hectares are planted around Haro on clay-limestone soils typical of Rioja Alta. The Lacuesta Selecto Crianza draws from 30-year-old Tempranillo vines in these surrounding vineyards, old enough to produce concentrated fruit and reduce yields naturally without irrigation pressure. The 2011 winery integrates underground sections into the terrain, using the earth itself as insulation to hold cellar temperature stable across seasons without mechanical climate control.
In the cellar
Vineyards and cellar
The 30-year-old Tempranillo vines around Haro that supply the Selecto Crianza are old enough to produce fruit with natural concentration. During barrel ageing, the Crianza uses a manual gravity-racking system, a labour-intensive method that moves wine between barrels by hand and gravity rather than pumping it. Pumping exerts pressure on wine in motion and can strip texture; gravity racking allows transfer with minimal mechanical intervention, preserving what the barrel has built. The vermouth line is made from the same quality tier of wine as the table wine programme, then aged in French oak casks after the herb and plant maceration is complete.
Wines to know
The range in view
The range follows Rioja's maturity architecture from the ground up. The Joven is the unoaked or lightly treated entry level, fruit-led and intended for early drinking. The Lacuesta Selecto Crianza, 100 percent Tempranillo from 30-year-old vines, sits at the range's working heart: barrel-aged with gravity racking, it carries the grip of older Tempranillo vines and the roundness that barrel contact brings to the variety's cherry and dried herb character. The Reserva and Gran Reserva extend the ageing arc further, drawing on the DOCa Rioja minimum requirements for additional time in wood and bottle, though their specific blends beyond Tempranillo are not confirmed. White and rosé wines round out the table wine programme.
A useful way in
A bottle to begin with
Start with the Lacuesta Selecto Crianza. It is 100 percent Tempranillo from 30-year-old vines grown in the vineyards directly surrounding Haro, aged in barrel using a manual gravity-racking process that the bodega has maintained as a deliberate production choice. It is a Rioja Crianza with rounded mid-palate texture, cherry and dried herb fruit, and the concentration that older Tempranillo vines produce without over-ripening in Rioja Alta's moderate Atlantic-influenced climate. It is an honest Haro red at the maturity level where the bodega's vineyard age and barrel work are clearest, and it costs less than the Reserva and Gran Reserva tiers that require additional cellaring time to fully open.