From the atlas
Bodegas Montecillo
At A Glance
Location: Fuenmayor, Rioja Alta, Spain Grapes: Tempranillo, Graciano Range: Crianza, Reserva, Gran Reserva (Classic); Viña Monty (Premium) Flagship: Gran Reserva Founded: 1870
The Producer
Bodegas Montecillo has been making wine in Fuenmayor since 1870, when Celestino Navajas Matute founded the bodega on the left bank of the Ebro in Rioja Alta. It is the oldest winery in the town and the third-oldest in Rioja. Three generations of the Navajas family ran it before the Osborne group, best known for sherry, acquired it in 1973. The Osborne ownership changed the commercial scale without breaking the production logic: the classic range of Crianza, Reserva, and Gran Reserva still anchors the portfolio, and the ageing cellars in Fuenmayor still hold bottles going back to 1926.
The winery now processes between three and five million kilos of grapes each year and maintains 17,000 barrels in the ageing cellars, where wines are still stacked by hand. A premium tier trades under the Viña Monty name, relaunched in 2020 to mark the 150th anniversary.
Place
Fuenmayor sits in Rioja Alta, the western subzone of Rioja, on the left bank of the Ebro river. This is the part of the region where Atlantic weather reaches furthest inland: cooler growing seasons, higher altitude sites, and sandier soils than the clay-heavy ground of Rioja Oriental to the east. Sandy soils drain quickly and warm slowly, which pushes Tempranillo toward finer tannins and earlier natural acidity rather than the broader, more extracted character of warmer eastern parcels.
The Graciano used in the Gran Reserva comes from a different address entirely: Pradejón in Rioja Oriental, near the Ebro meander at around 360 metres altitude, on clayey soils with a more Mediterranean climate. That contrast is deliberate. Graciano grown under Mediterranean conditions produces fruit with intense colour, high natural acidity, and aromatic lift, which strengthens the blend in a way that Rioja Alta Graciano, had it been planted there, would not.
Soil And Site
The Tempranillo parcels that feed the Classic range sit in Rioja Alta villages including Fuenmayor, Cenicero, Baños de Ebro, Sajazarra, and Cuzcurra. Soils across these sites are predominantly sandy. The vines are dry-farmed and bush-trained, with an average age above forty years. Old bush-trained vines on sandy ground produce lower yields and smaller berries, concentrating colour, flavour, and tannic grip into less juice than younger, trellised vines would give.
Story
The Navajas family story runs in three chapters. Celestino founded the bodega in 1870 and his son Gregorio expanded it with his brother Alejandro in the 1890s. The third chapter belongs to José Luis Navajas, who took charge in the mid-twentieth century after training at the wine school in Beaune, Burgundy. He came back to Fuenmayor with a technical method that Rioja had not yet adopted: cold fermentation, a technique that preserves fruit aromatics and controls extraction during alcoholic fermentation. Rioja later embraced it widely, but Montecillo was ahead.
José Luis had no children. When he decided to transfer the bodega in 1973, he passed it not to a commercial buyer but to the Osborne family, citing their centuries of experience in wine and spirits. Osborne, founded in El Puerto de Santa María in Andalucía and built on sherry and brandy, brought the infrastructure to scale production without dismantling the cellars or the house style. The historic vault in Fuenmayor, with its bottles from 1926, survived intact.
Vineyards And Cellar
Dry-farmed, bush-trained Tempranillo on sandy Rioja Alta soils gives the Classic range its tighter tannic frame and brighter red-fruit character. Bush training without irrigation forces vines to root deeply for water, limiting yield and concentrating flavour in each cluster. At harvest, Graciano from Pradejón adds acidity and aromatic complexity to the Gran Reserva blend.
In the cellar, the Gran Reserva spends a minimum of two years in French oak barrels followed by a minimum of forty months in bottle before release. French oak imparts subtler spice and finer grain than American oak, which had historically dominated Rioja ageing. The extended bottle rest allows the tannins to knit together without requiring the wine to resolve itself in the glass after opening. The 17,000 barrels in the ageing hall and the manual stacking of bottles speak to the scale of that commitment.
Wines
The Classic range moves through three levels, all red and all Tempranillo-led. The Crianza is the entry point: composition and élevage details are not published, but the style follows the Rioja norm of shorter oak and bottle ageing, producing a wine meant for earlier drinking. The Reserva steps up in depth and time: the 2017 vintage showed a concentrated mid-palate with dried cranberries, poached cherries, plums, olive tapenade, and prune paste on the flavour register, with nutmeg and cardamom as the spice thread. The tannins were linear and focused, the finish savoury and fresh. Decanter awarded it 91 points.
The Gran Reserva is the range's most committed wine. Made only in declared vintages, it blends 90% Tempranillo with 10% Graciano from Pradejón and ages for at least two years in French oak and more than forty months in bottle. The tannins are silky, polished, and velvety rather than hard or angular, and the colour runs to garnet-red with a ruby rim.
Viña Monty sits above the Classic range as the premium tier, relaunched in 2020 on the 150th anniversary. It focuses on old vintages and single-variety expressions and is made in separate facilities. Detailed tasting character for this range is not yet widely documented.
In The Glass
The Reserva opens with dried red fruit, poached cherry, and a thin layer of dark olive and dried plum, followed by baking-spice warmth from the nutmeg and cardamom the oak and ageing have worked into the wine. In the mouth, the tannins arrive early and stay linear, never spreading into the heavy grip of over-extracted Tempranillo. Acidity is present but not sharp: it keeps the fruit defined and the finish clean and savoury rather than flat. The concentration sits in the mid-palate, not the front of the mouth.
The Gran Reserva gives a softer, more layered version of the same skeleton. The silky tannins and longer time in bottle mean the wine has already resolved most of its structural edges before it reaches the glass. What opens is garnet-red, warm with French oak spice, and built for a long arc across a dinner table rather than a quick pour.
A Bottle To Understand It
Start with the Montecillo Reserva, current vintage. It is a mid-tier Rioja red, Tempranillo-led, aged in French oak and then in bottle, and it gives a clear picture of what the house does. The red-fruit concentration, the linear tannins, the savoury finish, and the spice note from the oak are all present without requiring the patience or the occasion that the Gran Reserva asks for. The 2017 earned 91 points from Decanter and is the most documented bottle in the range. At its price point, it is one of the more honestly constructed Reservas in Rioja Alta.
Anecdote
Sometime in the mid-twentieth century, José Luis Navajas returned to Fuenmayor from Beaune with a technique his grandfather Celestino had never used. Cold fermentation, developed in French cellars and taught at the wine school in Burgundy, slows the fermentation process with low temperatures, preserving the volatile aromatic compounds that warmer fermentation burns off. José Luis put it to work at Montecillo before the rest of Rioja did. The Burgundy method, grafted onto Ebro-valley Tempranillo, became part of what made the wines smell and taste different from the broader, more oxidative style that still dominated the region. When José Luis decided in 1973 that he had no heirs and could not leave the bodega to family, he chose the Osborne family over any commercial buyer. Down in the original cellar, the bottles his father and grandfather had laid down in 1926 were still there.
Final Word
Montecillo is a large bodega with a specific history and a clear range. The cold fermentation innovation José Luis Navajas brought back from Beaune, the Osborne acquisition that preserved rather than erased the house, and the Gran Reserva built on French oak and declared-vintage discipline give the Classic range something to stand on beyond age and scale. The Reserva is the bottle to reach for first.
Sources
- https://www.bodegasmontecillo.com/en/commitment/history/
- https://spanishwinelover.com/winerie/montecillo
- https://www.decanter.com/wine-reviews/spain/northern-spain/bodegas-montecillo-reserva-rioja-northern-spain-2017-90887/
- https://www.bodegasmontecillo.com/en/wines/classic-range/montecillo-gran-reserva/