Why it matters
The producer
In Elciego, a village on the northern bank of the Ebro in Rioja Alavesa, the Valdelana family has grown grapes and made wine without interruption since the seventeenth century. The earliest document connecting the family to the land dates to 1583, when Elciego won legal independence from the neighbouring town of Laguardia. Pedro Valdelana, the first identified family vine grower, was born in 1615. Fourteen generations later, the winery still operates from the same village, now from a production cellar completed in 2007 alongside cellars that date to the fifteenth century.
Elciego is a name most wine drinkers know for one building: the titanium-clad Frank Gehry hotel that Marqués de Riscal opened in 2006. Valdelana is the other Elciego story. Where Riscal built a landmark for international visitors, Valdelana stayed Basque and local, farming the same limestone-clay parcels its ancestors planted, selling under five brand names across Spain and export markets.
Place and vineyards
Where the wines begin
Rioja Alavesa is the northernmost of Rioja's three sub-zones, a strip of territory governed by the Basque regional administration rather than by the Spanish state that governs Rioja Alta and Rioja Oriental to the south and east. The Cantabrian mountain range sits to the north, blocking cold Atlantic air and funnelling enough moisture to keep the growing season from tipping into the dry heat that shapes Rioja Oriental. The Ebro runs along the southern edge.
The soils in Elciego are limestone and clay. Limestone drains freely and forces vine roots down toward moisture and minerals; clay retains water through dry summers and slows ripening toward the season's end. Together they tend to produce Tempranillo with firmer tannins and sharper acidity than the alluvial soils found on lower Rioja ground, and wines built to hold shape across several years in bottle.
In the cellar
Vineyards and cellar
Tempranillo anchors all five brands. Garnacha, Mazuelo, and Graciano fill traditional Rioja blending roles, adding colour depth, acid backbone, and aromatic grip respectively. Viura and Malvasía supply the white wine component of the range.
The most technically specific wine in the portfolio is the Juan Valdelana Viñedos Singulares Red. The grapes, a field blend of Tempranillo, Viura, Graciano, Garnacha, Mazuelo, and other old varieties, go into open wooden bocois whole and uncrushed. Carbonic maceration follows: the grapes ferment from the inside out under a blanket of carbon dioxide rather than through conventional crush-and-press extraction. The wine stays in the same bocoi for a year after fermentation ends, resting on its own lees without transfer to barrel or tank. The method pulls colour and primary fruit without harsh tannin extraction, and the vessel's age means no new oak flavour enters the wine.
Wines to know
The range in view
The Eder line is Valdelana's everyday tier. Eder Vino de Autor Tempranillo 2023 is 100% Tempranillo, unoaked, and built for direct fruit. The Eder de Valdelana Crianza 2022 carries the same grape but routes it through French and Caucasian oak ageing. On the nose it opens with ripe blackberry and plum, the oak adding a thread of smokiness behind the fruit. The palate runs darker, with black fruit, chocolate, and spice sitting over soft, smooth tannins. It is the more complete wine of the two Eder bottles.
The Juan Valdelana Viñedos Singulares Red sits at the opposite pole. Whole-cluster carbonic maceration from vines planted around 1920 produces a wine with more aromatic brightness and softer tannins than a conventionally extracted Rioja Reserva, but with the depth of fruit that only century-old roots supply. The field blend of six or more varieties, including Viura among the reds, adds texture complexity the single-varietal Eder wines do not attempt.
A useful way in
A bottle to begin with
Start with the Eder de Valdelana Crianza. It is 100% Tempranillo from Rioja Alavesa, aged in French and Caucasian oak, and it carries everything the appellation and the family's farming can produce at an accessible level. The blackberry and plum on the nose, the dark fruit and spice in the mouth, the soft tannins and the limestone-driven acidity on the finish: these are the markers of Rioja Alavesa Tempranillo in a bottle that does not require years of patience. It is also the wine with the fullest confirmed sensory profile in the range, so you know what to expect before opening it.