From the atlas
Bodegas Roda
At A Glance
Country: Spain Region: Rioja Alta Village / District: Barrio de la Estación, Haro Grape: Tempranillo Range: Sela, Roda, Roda I, Cirsion, Roda I Blanco Founded: 1987
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The Producer
Bodegas Roda occupies a corner of the Barrio de la Estación in Haro, the old railway station district where Rioja's grandest 19th-century houses built their reputations around a train line heading north. La Rioja Alta, Muga, and CVNE are neighbours. Roda is not.
Mario Rotllant and Carmen Daurella came from Catalonia in 1987, not as winemakers and not as heirs to anything in La Rioja. They had built careers in the gourmet food business. What they brought to Haro was a specific and stated ambition: to make a Rioja that worked differently from the houses around them. The winery they built sits above a 19th-century underground cellar, its old rock chambers pressed into service beneath temperature-controlled fermentation and ageing rooms. The range runs to five wines, four red and one white, all built on Tempranillo from old vines assembled across multiple parcels.
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Place
Haro is the main commercial town of Rioja Alta, the westernmost of the three Rioja subzones and the one most shaped by the Atlantic. Cooler temperatures and higher rainfall than Rioja Baja give the grapes longer hang time and firmer acidity. The Ebro river runs along the valley floor; vines climb into the surrounding hillsides on clay and limestone.
The Barrio de la Estación matters because of what the railway did. When the line arrived in the late 19th century, it gave Rioja's producers a fast route to northern Spain and France, and the major houses built warehouses and bodegas right beside the tracks. That clustering created the district's character: serious, established, commercially ambitious. Roda chose that address deliberately, planting itself among houses with a century's head start.
For the wines, the Rioja Alta placement means old Tempranillo vines growing in Atlantic-influenced conditions, harvested at a ripeness that preserves acidity, then aged in a cellar where the underground stone chambers keep temperatures stable year-round.
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Soil And Site
Roda does not own a single unified estate. Its range is built on around 20 parcels distributed across different ecosystems in Rioja Alta. Seventeen of those plots carry vines over 30 years old. Poor soils are a selection criterion, not an accident: thin, low-fertility ground forces roots deeper and limits vigour, producing smaller crops from vines that extract more from the mineral base beneath them.
The parcels were assembled rather than inherited. That choice, repeated across two decades of operation, is the site logic behind the whole range. Each parcel is treated as a discrete source; the 17 French oak fermentation vats exist because the model requires one container per plot.
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Story
When Rotllant and Daurella arrived in Haro in 1987, the dominant Rioja model was the single large estate or the long-established merchant house, ageing Tempranillo in American oak barrels for years before release. The vanilla and coconut character that American oak gives to Rioja red wine was, by the late 1980s, so expected that it had become part of Rioja's profile.
Roda refused it. French oak went in from the start. The decision pushed the wines toward darker fruit and spice, away from the creamy sweetness of the American-oak tradition, and placed Roda clearly in the modern camp of Rioja producers.
The parcel assembly model compounded the difference. Rather than buying a single estate or inheriting one, Rotllant and Daurella spent years identifying individual plots across Rioja Alta: old vines, poor soils, specific ecosystems. Each plot was added because of what it contributed separately. The winery built above the old underground cellar became the processing centre for a patchwork of sources, connected by the principle that the site character of each parcel should arrive in the bottle without being averaged out.
Solar vacuum tubes now supply the hot water for production, a practical sustainability commitment that fits the broader pattern of building the bodega on deliberate choices rather than inherited habits.
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Vineyards And Cellar
The 17 French oak vats are the mechanical expression of the parcel model. Each vat receives grapes from one plot, which means the fermentation of each parcel happens separately and the winemaking team can evaluate each source on its own before any blending decisions are made. No parcel disappears into a general tank.
After fermentation, malolactic conversion takes place in a purpose-built room with temperature control and underfloor heating, sized for 1,000 barrels at a time. Controlling the temperature during malolactic fermentation affects the rate and character of the conversion, giving the cellar team more influence over how the red-fruit acids transform into softer lactic texture.
Ageing is entirely in French oak barrels across all five wines. No American oak enters the cellar. The duration per wine is not published in detail, but the commitment to French oak throughout sets the tonal direction of every bottle in the range: tighter grain, less extraction of vanilla and coconut compounds, more integration of dark fruit and spice with the Tempranillo character.
One rule governs the entire range: wines from other vintages are never used to modify or refresh the current vintage. Each bottle carries only one year.
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Wines
The five-wine range moves from accessible to singular. Sela is the entry-level red, built for earlier drinking. Roda is the mid-tier, drawing on the assembled old-vine parcels with the full French oak treatment. Roda I sits above it, selecting from the same parcel network but at higher intensity. Cirsion is the flagship, produced from the most concentrated and specific parcel material in exceptional years. Roda I Blanco is the single white wine.
All four reds are Tempranillo-led. The hierarchy is a hierarchy of site selection and parcel intensity, not of appellation or vineyard classification in the Burgundian sense. Moving up the range means moving toward older vines, poorer soils, and parcels that were chosen for their capacity to produce concentrated, defined fruit under the French oak ageing regime. The effect on the palate is cumulative: more grip, deeper colour, longer finish as the range ascends, though the French oak frame and vintage-only composition run through all four.
Roda I Blanco arrived in the range later and its grape composition is not confirmed in published sources.
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In The Glass
Old-vine Tempranillo from poor mineral soils, vinified parcel by parcel and aged entirely in French oak, produces a Rioja that sits away from the traditional regional profile. Where American oak gives Rioja its familiar vanilla and coconut softness, French oak keeps those compounds quieter. The wines are darker in fruit, drier in their wood character, and more dependent on the grape and soil to do the flavour work.
The wines open with red and dark cherry, some dried herb and earth, and a spice note that comes from the oak without dominating the Tempranillo fruit. In the mouth, the acidity from Rioja Alta's Atlantic-influenced growing season keeps the wines from feeling heavy. Tannins from old vines grown under stress in poor soils are fine-grained and even, giving the wine grip without the chewiness that younger vines or richer soils can produce.
Across the range from Roda upward, the volume of fruit increases and the finish lengthens, while the fundamental character, dark fruit, dry oak spice, and firm acidity, holds consistent.
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A Bottle To Understand It
Start with Roda. It sits at the centre of what the bodega does: old-vine Tempranillo from the assembled parcels, individually fermented in French oak vats, aged entirely in French oak barrels, bottled from one vintage only. There is no entry compromise in the method; the same cellar principles that produce Cirsion produce Roda. What changes is the parcel selection and the intensity of the source material.
In the glass, Roda is dark-fruited and dry, with the oak integrated rather than announced. The acidity from Rioja Alta holds the wine upright and gives it the clean finish that American-oak-aged Rioja often softens away. It is a Tempranillo that reads as place and method rather than as wood. Drink it alongside lamb or roasted meat, or leave it in a cellar for five to eight years to let the tannins and fruit move closer together.
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Anecdote
Mario Rotllant and Carmen Daurella arrived in Haro in 1987 with no family property in La Rioja, no inherited vines, and no established name in the region. They had built their careers in the gourmet food business in Catalonia. What they had was a specific idea: a Rioja bodega in the most prestigious winemaking district in the region, built from scratch, working from different principles than the houses already there. They chose the Barrio de la Estación, the old railway district where La Rioja Alta, Muga, and CVNE had been operating for a century, and they began assembling parcels of old vines across the subzone rather than buying a single estate. They built their winery above a 19th-century underground cellar. They filled it with French oak, not American. And they declared from the beginning that the objective was to make something different from the producers around them. The youngest bodega in the neighbourhood set itself against everything the neighbourhood stood for.
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Final Word
Bodegas Roda is a bodega built on a set of choices made by outsiders. French oak over American. Assembled parcels over single estate. Parcel-level vinification over blended tanks. No inter-vintage correction. Those choices, held from 1987 forward, give the five-wine range a coherent character: dark-fruited, dry-oaked Tempranillo from old vines in poor Rioja Alta soils, bottled vintage-true. The Barrio de la Estación address puts Roda among Rioja's oldest names. Everything else places it apart from them.
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Sources
- https://roda.es/
- https://roda.es/en/bodegas-roda/about-roda
- https://www.foodswinesfromspain.com/en/wine/articles/2016/august/bodegas-roda-innovation-in-rioja
- https://www.bbr.com/producer-3093-bodegas-roda