Why it matters
The producer
Azofra is a small village on the Camino Francés, the main pilgrim road to Santiago de Compostela, and Bodegas y Viñedos Quiroga de Pablo is the only winery there. Six generations of the Quiroga de Pablo family have grown grapes and made wine in Rioja Alta from this address, and the cellar beneath the building is older than the modern bodega above it: a stone-arched calado cut eight to ten metres into the earth, where the temperature holds steady and the masonry absorbs a century of harvests.
The three current principals are siblings Juan Luis, Diego, and Maite. They work the same underground cellar their predecessors did, now alongside temperature-controlled stainless steel tanks upstairs and a modern pressing and bottling line added after 2000. The approach they have settled on is deliberate: oak ages the wines but does not define them. Both Crianza lines finish their maturation not in barrel but in the calado's subterranean concrete tanks, where the oak character integrates rather than amplifies.
Place and vineyards
Where the wines begin
Rioja Alta sits in the western portion of the DOCa Rioja zone, where the Sierra de Cantabria deflects Atlantic weather from the north and rainfall arrives more reliably than in the drier, warmer Rioja Oriental to the east. At these altitudes and latitudes, Tempranillo ripens with firmer acidity and cooler-toned fruit than it produces in the lower, hotter subzones. The practical consequence is red wines that lean toward fresh cherry rather than plum, and Crianza wines that carry enough acidity to absorb their oak ageing without becoming heavy.
Azofra itself is small, lying in the Najerilla valley corridor that connects the higher ground of Rioja Alta to the Ebro plain. The DOCa Rioja designation covers the full production range here: reds, rosé, and, since 2009, white wines made from Tempranillo Blanco.
In the cellar
Vineyards and cellar
The bodega sources grapes exclusively from its own holdings. The vineyards extend through the Najerilla valley, planted primarily to Tempranillo, with a separate planting of Tempranillo Blanco, the white-fruited genetic mutation of the region's red variety.
The Quirus Tempranillo Blanco takes a different route entirely: cold maceration on skins before pressing extracts aromatic compounds from the white-fruited grape without colour, followed by a gentle press, settling, and cool fermentation to preserve the delicate fruit register.
Wines to know
The range in view
The range divides cleanly into two families. The fresh tier covers the Quirus Tinto Joven, Quirus Rosado, and Quirus Tempranillo Blanco: wines made to be opened young, without oak ageing, and built for fruit and lift rather than development.
The Quirus Tempranillo Blanco is the most unusual bottle in the range. Tempranillo Blanco is a natural mutation of Rioja's red Tempranillo that produces white-skinned fruit; it was formally permitted in DOCa Rioja from 2009 and remains a minority style in a region whose white wine production is vastly outweighed by red. Cold maceration on skins before fermentation pulls aromatic compounds out of the white grape skins. The resulting wine is straw-yellow with green tints and shows tropical and citric aromas alongside white fruit and floral notes.
A useful way in
A bottle to begin with
Start with Lagar de Cayo Crianza. It is the bottle where every element of this bodega's approach converges: Rioja Alta Tempranillo, twelve to eighteen months of oak ageing in American and French barrels, and a final slow maturation in the stone-arched underground tanks of the calado. The colour is deep cherry-red with ruby tones. The nose is complex and expressive, with mature red fruit and well-integrated wood nuance. The palate is savoury, full-flavoured, and long, with the balance that comes from a wine whose oak and fruit have had time to settle into each other. It is not an oak-forward wine; the calado maturation sees to that.