Why it matters
The producer
Bodegas Roda occupies a corner of the Barrio de la Estación in Haro, the old railway station district where Rioja's grandest 19th-century houses built their reputations around a train line heading north. La Rioja Alta, Muga, and CVNE are neighbours. Roda is not.
Mario Rotllant and Carmen Daurella came from Catalonia in 1987, not as winemakers and not as heirs to anything in La Rioja. They had built careers in the gourmet food business. What they brought to Haro was a specific and stated ambition: to make a Rioja that worked differently from the houses around them. The winery they built sits above a 19th-century underground cellar, its old rock chambers pressed into service beneath temperature-controlled fermentation and ageing rooms. The range runs to five wines, four red and one white, all built on Tempranillo from old vines assembled across multiple parcels.
Place and vineyards
Where the wines begin
Haro is the main commercial town of Rioja Alta, the westernmost of the three Rioja subzones and the one most shaped by the Atlantic. Cooler temperatures and higher rainfall than Rioja Baja give the grapes longer hang time and firmer acidity. The Ebro river runs along the valley floor; vines climb into the surrounding hillsides on clay and limestone.
The Barrio de la Estación matters because of what the railway did. When the line arrived in the late 19th century, it gave Rioja's producers a fast route to northern Spain and France, and the major houses built warehouses and bodegas right beside the tracks. That clustering created the district's character: serious, established, commercially ambitious. Roda chose that address deliberately, planting itself among houses with a century's head start.
In the cellar
Vineyards and cellar
The 17 French oak vats are the mechanical expression of the parcel model. Each vat receives grapes from one plot, which means the fermentation of each parcel happens separately and the winemaking team can evaluate each source on its own before any blending decisions are made. No parcel disappears into a general tank.
After fermentation, malolactic conversion takes place in a purpose-built room with temperature control and underfloor heating, sized for 1,000 barrels at a time. Controlling the temperature during malolactic fermentation affects the rate and character of the conversion, giving the cellar team more influence over how the red-fruit acids transform into softer lactic texture.
Wines to know
The range in view
The five-wine range moves from accessible to singular. Sela is the entry-level red, built for earlier drinking. Roda is the mid-tier, drawing on the assembled old-vine parcels with the full French oak treatment. Roda I sits above it, selecting from the same parcel network but at higher intensity. Cirsion is the flagship, produced from the most concentrated and specific parcel material in exceptional years. Roda I Blanco is the single white wine.
All four reds are Tempranillo-led. The hierarchy is a hierarchy of site selection and parcel intensity, not of appellation or vineyard classification in the Burgundian sense. Moving up the range means moving toward older vines, poorer soils, and parcels that were chosen for their capacity to produce concentrated, defined fruit under the French oak ageing regime. The effect on the palate is cumulative: more grip, deeper colour, longer finish as the range ascends, though the French oak frame and vintage-only composition run through all four.
A useful way in
A bottle to begin with
Start with Roda. It sits at the centre of what the bodega does: old-vine Tempranillo from the assembled parcels, individually fermented in French oak vats, aged entirely in French oak barrels, bottled from one vintage only. There is no entry compromise in the method; the same cellar principles that produce Cirsion produce Roda. What changes is the parcel selection and the intensity of the source material.