The descendants of a family who has been dedicated to farming and viticulture for generations in Lanciego, Juanjo Mendieta and Hortensia Zabala decided to build a winery in 1982 in their village but never dared to sell their own carbonic maceration wines.
Those were times when most of the wine was sold in bulk to the local cooperative or to visitors who came to the winery's gate, and that was how they made a living. It was his son Juantxu, born on the 1973 vintage, who took up the challenge of making wine from the 13 hectares of family vineyards located in Lanciego, Viñaspre, Assa, Laguardia and Kripan. After studying oenology and viticulture, Juantxu -or Mendi, as he is called in the village- began to label the family wines under the Riolanc brand (an acronym of Rioja and Lanciego) in 2005.
He started out making and selling young reds and in bulk, but as time went by, and as he read and tasted other wines, he discovered that the future lay in making quality wines with an identity. The trips he made during his two years at the Viticulture and Oenology course in Laguardia, where he shared lectures with local producers such as Carlos Fernández de Tierra and Miguel Ángel Muro, also helped. "On a trip to Bordeaux we visited a producer who lived off two hectares and I asked myself: 'If this man can do it, why can't I?
In 2016, by then married to Carmen Osaba, a Californian with Basque roots, Juantxu changed the name of his winery to Mendieta Osaba, revamped the labels of his wines with an embossed image of his wife and two daughters, swapped the capsules for colourful seals (except on the young wine) and set out to provide his vines and wines with a sense of place.
The fresh and fruity carbonic maceration red Mendi (around €6 in Spain) accounts for half of its total production of 80,000 bottles, but the idea is to gradually reduce this figure in order to increase production of Osaba (12,000 bottles, €10), a Tempranillo that blends grapes from different plots between 30 and 60 years old and is aged for about six months in seasoned barrels.
The other three wines in the range are all from individual plots. The two Vascomendi, a white and a red, are classified as Viñedo Singular and come from the south-facing Vasconegro vineyard in Lanciego, at 570 elevation (Juantxu does not use that name because another producer has it registered). The intense, floral white (600 bottles, about €20) blends +50-year-old Viura and Malvasía and is fermented on its lees in a 400-litre barrel with occasional punch-downs. The red is a 100% Tempranillo with ripe fruit and balance (1,700 bottles, about €20) fermented in concrete tanks and aged in second-year French and American barrels.
The 2020 vintage of El Camino (700 bottles, €19) is the first on the market. It is a 100% Mazuelo from a 1.5 hectare plot in Assa, with a guardaviñas (a traditional stone hut to store tools) and views of the ruins of the Mandible Roman bridge. Juantxu remembers riding the tractor with his father, who died in 2008, to plant the vineyard when he was 12 years old. It is a vineyard with two different parts: the poorer upper area is dominated by pebbles and is planted with this Mazuelo, a little planted variety in Rioja Alavesa, as well as Viura. For the 2021 vintage, production will increase to 3,000 bottles.
Both in this plot and in the rest of his vineyards, 60% of which are goblet-trained and over 35 years of age, Juantxu does not use herbicides and works partly organically. Although not yet certified, he tries to take care of his vineyard minimising any treatments.
Mendieta exports around 80% of its wines to markets such as the United States, Russia, Norway, Germany, Belgium and Portugal, so from 2021 he hopes to be able to eliminate all the bulk production and label all of his grapes.
The winery, located in the upper part of Lanciego, can be visited subject to prior appointment.