Starting a winery from scratch is a daunting proposition. With more than six hundred wineries in the Rioja Appellation, competition is ferocious under normal circumstances. And if we consider the current worldwide crisis of wine consumption, one might ask why anyone in their right mind would start a winery. Carlos Estecha however, is much more than just a winemaker.
After 30 years working as the head winemaker for Bodegas Franco-Españolas and Federico Paternina, two of Rioja’s most popular brands, at age 57, Carlos took early retirement. Against all odds he decided to build a small winery using grapes from 13 hectares (32,1 acres) owned by his family.
The project was not simply a matter of reaching into his savings and asking for a loan to build a winery. Estecha says, “the administrative steps and the bureaucracy in general were enormous and frightening.”
Estecha’s winery is “La Romántica Compañía de Vinos” (the Romantic Company of Wines), an apt description given Carlos’s wide range of interests that lean toward romanticism, in contrast to the stark reality of the wine business today.
How does he cope? In addition to his enormous talent as a grape grower and winemaker, Estecha is an abstract painter, a musician, a composer and an actor in films that his friend, the director and producer Manu Ochoa call “independent, low cost and with Riojan soul”.
Estecha’s winery is “La Romántica Compañía de Vinos” (the Romantic Company of Wines).
Estecha’s wine brands reflect his romantic mindset. His red is Tilburi, described on the back label as an “elegant and romantic horse-drawn carriage that took travelers around country roads in the 19th century”.
His white, Chamarita, in Estecha’s words is “a homage to a breed of sheep that traditionally grazed in the highest parts of vineyards near the mountains. Here, aromatic herbs like lavender, rosemary and thyme lend their special personality to our (Rioja’s) great white wines”.
After you step through a delicately sculpted wooden door with wrought-iron window frames, inside the no-frills winery there’s a large space containing not only typical wine-related stuff like storage for finished wines, barrels, casks, a small laboratory, and a long table for meeting customers and greeting visitors. You also see quirky memorabilia that has caught Carlos’s eye and a few paintings and sculptures that he does not hesitate to give to his friends.
Carlos’s interests are so far-ranging that sometimes it’s hard to remember that he owns a winery. He belongs to a group of retired winery executives that gets together to reminisce about the good times we had selling wine around the world and complaining about the current situation over drinks and meals in bars and restaurants around Logroño. Whenever we call Carlos, he invariably replies, “I’ll be late; I’m running around making deliveries!”.
Carlos Estecha (on the right), always a good friend.
Romántica Compañía de Vinos
Carretera de Laserna, 8
01320 Laguardia (Álava, Spain)
Text by Tom Perry, Inside Rioja
Photo credits: Tom Perry, John Perry.
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