Spain · Rioja

Bodegas Manzanos

A large-scale Rioja producer founded in 1890, with 1,525 hectares across Rioja DOCa and Navarra DO, operating partly from the oldest winery building in Haro, a medieval castle cellar dating to 1801. Manzanos owns 20 percent of all Graciano hectares in Rioja.

The producer

Bodegas Manzanos was founded in 1890 by the Fernández de Manzanos family in Azagra, a Navarran town close to the Rioja border, and grew across five generations into one of the region's larger producers. The company manages 1,525 hectares across two appellations: 950 in Rioja DOCa and 575 in Navarra DO. In February 2025, French entrepreneur Michel Boutin acquired the group, ending 135 years of unbroken family ownership.

The winery in Haro dates to 1801, making it the oldest winery building in the city. Its cellars run through the underground stone galleries of Haro's medieval castle, and the Palacio de Tejada, a formal palace built in 1733, forms part of the same complex. Modern gravity-flow equipment handles the juice inside those vaulted chambers. Tempranillo covers more than 75 percent of the growing area; Graciano is the specialist holding, with Manzanos owning 20 percent of all Graciano hectares planted in Rioja DOCa, a concentration in a variety that most producers avoid because of its low yields and difficult farming.

Known for

Graciano concentration: 20 percent of all Rioja DOCa Graciano hectares, alongside a Tempranillo-led range across Rioja DOCa and Navarra DO.

Notable facts

The story

The Stone Galleries of Haro

In 1801, when Napoleon's armies were still moving across Spain, wine was already being made beneath the castle of Haro in vaulted stone galleries that have never stopped being used since. The castle above was a medieval fortification; below it, chambers cut into the hillside held barrels in a temperature that required no machinery to maintain. The Fernández de Manzanos family, founded in Azagra in 1890, did not build those galleries. They came to operate them, and when the fifth generation installed modern gravity-flow equipment into the same stone rooms, the chambers imposed the same logic they always had: wine moves down, not up, because the stone does not permit otherwise. The Palacio de Tejada, built in 1733 on the surface of the same complex, still stands above the cellars today.

From the atlas

Bodegas Manzanos

At A Glance

The Producer

Bodegas Manzanos is one of Rioja's larger producers, and one of the few operating at that scale with a genuine specialist claim. The Fernández de Manzanos family founded the business in 1890 in Azagra, a town in Navarra close to the Rioja border, and built it across five generations until 2025, when French entrepreneur Michel Boutin acquired the group. The company now manages 1,525 hectares across two appellations: 950 hectares in Rioja DOCa and 575 in Navarra DO.

The winery the family eventually came to operate in Haro, the main commercial hub of Rioja Alta, is something else entirely. That building dates to 1801, making it the oldest winery in the city. It is not a converted farmhouse. The cellar runs through the underground stone galleries of Haro's medieval castle, and the Palacio de Tejada, a formal palace built in 1733, forms part of the same site. Gravity-flow equipment now handles the juice inside those vaulted galleries, pulling wine through crushing and fermentation without mechanical pumping.

The family's specialist position in Graciano defines Manzanos in the region more sharply than scale alone. The producer owns 20 percent of all Graciano hectares planted in Rioja DOCa, a concentration in a variety that most producers avoid because it yields poorly and is difficult to farm reliably.

Place

Rioja DOCa divides into three sub-zones with different soils and climates, and the bottles that result read differently in the glass. Rioja Alta, where the Haro winery sits, is the coolest and highest of the three, shaped by Atlantic weather coming in from the northwest over the Cantabrian mountains. Altitude and cloud cover slow ripening and preserve acidity in the grapes.

Navarra DO adjoins Rioja to the northeast and shares some of the same Tempranillo-dominated planting, but the appellation has its own legal designation and produces wines labelled separately. Manzanos holds 575 hectares there, which is not a secondary holding at arm's length: it is a substantial part of the total operation, and Navarra DO wines appear in the range under their own appellation designation.

A producer working across both Rioja DOCa and Navarra DO can draw on meaningfully different soils and growing conditions within the same family of varieties. The bottles carry that appellation distinction on the label, which tells a buyer which legal zone and climate shaped the wine.

Soil And Site

The Rioja DOCa vineyards cover a range of soil types typical of the region: calcareous clay soils in Rioja Alta, where chalk and iron content shape root depth and water retention, and lighter alluvial material in lower-elevation parcels. The 250 hectares owned outright in Rioja and 50 in Navarra are managed directly; the remaining 700 controlled in Rioja and 525 in Navarra come under contract arrangements that give the producer access to fruit without full ownership.

Graciano, which occupies a deliberately over-represented portion of the owned Rioja hectares, grows best on well-drained, lower-yielding soils where the variety's naturally low productivity is not compounded by excessive moisture. Calcareous sites suit it.

Story

The Fernández de Manzanos family began making wine in 1890 in Azagra, a market town where Navarra and Rioja run close together geographically and historically. For four generations the business expanded across both appellations, acquiring vineyards, building out the Haro facility, and developing a range built primarily on Tempranillo.

When Víctor and David Fernández de Manzanos took over as the fifth generation in 2010, they inherited a working Rioja producer of real scale and accelerated the move toward sustainable farming. The company obtained International Wineries for Climate Protection certification and modernised both production facilities while keeping the gravity-flow approach that the historic Haro winery had always required by necessity: stone galleries carved beneath a medieval castle do not permit conventional tank-room layouts.

In February 2025, Víctor and David sold the Manzanos Wines Group to Michel Boutin, founder of the Domaines Michel Boutin group. After 135 years of unbroken family ownership, the business passed to an international operator with an explicitly global commercial strategy. The Haro winery, the Navarra vineyards, the Graciano holdings, and the gravity-flow tanks remain. The family name stays on the label. What changes is who directs where the wine goes next.

Vineyards And Cellar

Tempranillo accounts for more than three quarters of the total growing area, which places Manzanos firmly within Rioja's dominant varietal logic. Tempranillo gives the region's classic red wines their dried cherry and earth character, their medium tannin, and their capacity for oak ageing.

Graciano is planted at a concentration no other single producer in Rioja can match. The variety is late-ripening and low-yielding, which is why the region has historically planted so little of it. Where Tempranillo gives roundness and approachability, Graciano brings higher acidity, darker fruit, violet perfume, and a frame that holds together over long ageing. In blending it reinforces freshness and aromatic lift. As a single-variety wine it gives a portrait of Rioja that most bottles in the region never attempt.

Both facilities, the historic Haro site and the modern production building, use gravity flow from the point of crushing through to fermentation. Moving juice and young wine by gravity rather than pump preserves the cell structure of the grape and reduces the mechanical shear that can flatten aroma and texture in high-volume production. Fermentation takes place across multiple vessel types, a choice the producer links to adding complexity across the range.

Wines

Finca Manzanos is the estate label, drawing on fruit from owned vineyards and covering the main Rioja DOCa styles: red, white, and rosado at various ageing levels from Joven through to Reserva. The 1890 range sits at a premium position within the portfolio, referencing the founding year and signalling longer selection and cellar time. Voché is a further sub-range within the broader group.

Navarra DO wines from the southern holdings appear under their own appellation and represent a distinct part of the portfolio. Wines from Navarra carry a different origin, a different regulatory framework, and a somewhat different character from the same Tempranillo variety grown under Atlantic influence in Rioja Alta.

Graciano appears both as a blending component in Rioja reds and as a single-variety wine. The single-variety Graciano from Manzanos is one of a small number of wines in the DOCa built around the variety from this concentration of plantings. The wine carries Graciano's signature: dark berry fruit, pronounced acidity, violet and herb notes on the nose, and a tannin frame that suggests capacity for ageing over a decade or more. Across the range, the Tempranillo-led wines move from lighter, younger styles at the Joven level through to Reserva and beyond, where American and French oak ageing adds the vanilla, leather, and dried fruit notes that characterise aged Rioja.

In The Glass

The Tempranillo-led Reserva level is where the classic Rioja character of this producer is clearest. On the nose the wine opens with dried cherry, dried plum, and a line of cedar from American oak, with earth and tobacco notes building underneath. In the mouth acidity is moderate but present enough to keep the wine moving through the mid-palate; tannins are firm and integrated after the mandated minimum two years of ageing before release. The finish carries dried red fruit, leather, and a faint tobacco warmth.

The single-variety Graciano is a different register entirely. The nose is darker: blackberry, black olive, violet, and iron. In the mouth acidity is significantly higher than Tempranillo, giving a lively, almost cutting quality that keeps the considerable body from feeling heavy. Tannin is dense and grippy when young, softening over time but always present. The finish is long, herbal at the end, and persistently fruity underneath.

White wines from the range, made primarily from Viura, sit in the lighter, earlier-drinking category: pale straw, citrus and green apple on the nose, clean and dry in the mouth with moderate acidity.

A Bottle To Understand It

Bodegas Manzanos owns 20 percent of all Graciano hectares planted in Rioja DOCa. Graciano from a producer holding one fifth of the region's total plantings is not an experiment or a limited release: it is a core expression of a deliberate long-term bet on the variety. The wine opens with blackberry and violet on the nose, moves into a mouth-filling combination of dark fruit and firm, high acidity, and closes long with herb and iron on the finish. There is enough tannin to support several years of further ageing but enough fruit to reward a bottle opened now with food. Start here if you want to understand what Rioja can do outside Tempranillo, and what scale combined with a specialist grape holding actually produces.

Anecdote

In 1801, when Napoleon's armies were still moving across Spain, wine was already being made beneath the castle of Haro in the stone galleries that have never stopped being used since. The castle above was a medieval fortification; below it, vaulted chambers cut into the hillside held barrels in a temperature that required no machinery to maintain. The Fernández de Manzanos family, founded in Azagra in 1890, did not build those galleries. They came to operate them, and when the fifth generation installed modern gravity-flow equipment into the same stone rooms two centuries after the first vintage, the chambers imposed the same logic they always had: wine moves down, not up, because the stone does not permit otherwise. The Palacio de Tejada, built in 1733 on the surface of the same complex, still stands above the cellars today.

Final Word

Bodegas Manzanos is a Rioja producer whose scale is large and whose most interesting claim is narrow: one fifth of all Graciano in the region, grown in owned parcels and made in a winery built into a medieval castle. The 2025 sale to Michel Boutin closes a 135-year family chapter and opens a new one whose direction is not yet fully visible. The bottles that carry the Fernández de Manzanos name are Rioja at working scale, with Graciano as the reason to look more closely.

Sources

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