Senorio de Librares, Rioja Rosado 2025

Tempranillo and Garnacha

Rioja, Spain

Organic. 50% Tempranillo 50% Garnacha. Sourced from El Cerro, a vineyard in Tudelilla district at 550m in altitude and from the slopes of Sierra la Haz with strong Atlantic influences. The grapes are destemmed and given 24 hours of skin contact before being bled off into concrete tanks. Elevage in concrete, lightly filtered w/ small dose SO2 added at bottling. VEGAN.

Sisters Clara and Patricia Espinosa, are a little bit skeptical of the last century or so in Rioja. Sure, there was money being made and wine being sold, but the trends since industrialized wine came on the scene seemed to prioritize nothing as much as “old barrels and old palates.” Since coming into the family business in 2019, the sisters have decided to modernize and transform their ancestral holdings – 50 hectares of organic conversion grapes throughout the sub appellation. While the family has traditionally sold bulk wine and grapes to other wineries, the sisters saw the potential for the future - wine bottled under the estate’s name and with a nod to the vast universe of wine outside their village.

Neither of the two sisters is formally trained in winemaking. The elder, Patricia, works in fashion and design in London, while Clara studied business in Madrid and trained as a sommelier. The two were instrumental in convincing their father to begin organic conversion in 2014, and in 2019 the pair formally began their project. Patricia is in charge of selling wine and developing the business, and Clara works with her father, Felipe, to make the wines and run the winery. The family has long been proponents of traditional agricultural practices, most notably following the lunar calendar – the name of the estate, Librares, references the harvest moon and the moon when the first wines are ready to drink, and Clara informs us that their father only schedules haircuts based off of the lunar cycle. Under the sister’s care and in partnership with their dad, the family has begun to bottle a third of their production, and hope to eventually have uses for all 50 hectares in the future.

The holdings of the Espinosa family are entirely in Rioja Oriental, formerly known as Rioja Baja. Located in the east of Rioja, the sub-region is a bit of a grab-bag, comprising both the warmest and the coldest sites in the DO at wildly varying altitudes. 

Uniformly, the wines from the estate are bright, joyful and fun, which is, historically, not three adjectives that spring to mind from Rioja. Senorio de Librares makes the case, however, that they absolutely should, without sacrificing any of the sophistication or complexity that is the hallmark of the DO. These wines aren’t stodgy investment pieces, nor are they candy-colored glou-glou, but instead, a difficult-to-achieve third thing – rigorously made fun wines that don’t feel too precious to crack into quickly. These are wines of Rioja that nevertheless are not solely defined by the Rioja Industrial Complex, zigging and zagging and laughing all the way to your glass and beyond.