Category: Wine Education

Old Vines, Old Debate… And Why Rioja Has Already Answered It

A response from CLOS CIEN, Rioja Alavesa

The conversation around old-vine wine has been simmering for years, and pieces like this one are doing important work in bringing it to a wider audience. The science is accumulating and the consumer curiosity is there. What has been missing, until relatively recently, is a regulatory framework with enough teeth to give “old vine” real meaning beyond the marketing department.

In Rioja, that framework now exists. And it changes the terms of the debate considerably.

How Rioja Made Old Vines Legally Meaningful

In 2017, DOCa Rioja did exactly that, formally approving the Viñedo Singular designation and implementing it from 2019 onwards. It is worth understanding what that classification actually demands, because it goes considerably further than a minimum vine age.

What Viñedo Singular Actually Demands

The EU formally approved Viñedo Singular as a geographical indication in 2026. As of mid-2023, 148 Viñedo Singular sites covering approximately 246 hectares had been officially recognised across Rioja, owned by 90 different wineries. This is not a commercial category. It is an acknowledgement that certain parcels of land, worked by certain vines over decades, produce something categorically different.

From Oak-First to Terroir-First: The 2018 Reform

The Viñedo Singular classification grew out of a long-running debate within Rioja about the primacy of terroir over oak ageing as a quality marker. The 2018 reform moved Rioja from being focused primarily on ageing and oaking to a more all-encompassing system inspecting the terroir of the wine. Viñedo Singular sits at the apex of that shift.

Why This Matters at CLOS CIEN

At CLOS CIEN, this is not an abstract policy discussion. It is the foundation of everything we do. We operate within the Rioja Alavesa subzone, where calcareous clay soils over limestone bedrock produce wines of distinctive acidity and definition. Every vineyard in our portfolio sits between 35 and 100 years old. That is not a marketing position. It is a strict operational parameter.

What an Old Vine Actually Records

When a member of ours stands in a vineyard in Samaniego, El Villar or Laguardia and looks at vines planted sixty or seventy years ago, they are not looking at an agricultural asset. They are looking at a living record of decisions made by the people who farmed that land before them. Those decisions accumulated over decades into the soil chemistry, the root depth, and the natural yield regulation. That is not just quality. That is resilience.

The Market Gap That Remains

What remains true is that the market has not yet fully priced in the difference. A wine from 80-year-old Tempranillo vines in Rioja Alavesa may not command the same premium as a grand cru Burgundy made from vines of comparable age. That gap is narrowing, and for those paying attention, Rioja’s old-vine story is one of the most compelling undervalued narratives in the fine wine world today.

CLOS CIEN is a fractional vineyard ownership and premium winemaking platform based in Rioja Alavesa, DOCa Rioja. Members create their own fine wines from old-vine parcels with a minimum age of 35 years. For further information, visit closcien.com

The Man Behind the Membership

Ali on building CLOS CIEN from the inside out

Ask Ali what a typical day looks like and he will pause, then smile. “A typical day I’m not sure I have one.” It is not evasion. It is simply the truth of what it means to be the operational and commercial heartbeat of CLOS CIEN, a membership unlike anything else in the wine world.

On any given morning, Ali might be reviewing contracts for a new member joining at the Estate tier double-checking the logistics of their onboarding, making sure the transition from prospect to owner is seamless. By afternoon, he’s liaising with a long-standing member about the label design for their private bottling, calling on two decades of freelance design experience to translate someone’s vision into something they’ll hold in their hands years from now. By evening, he might be fielding questions about vineyard conditions, harvest timelines, or simply how the wine is evolving.

“Every case is different,” he says. “Different tiers, different expectations, different people. The job is making sure each of them feels like the only one.”

The Quiet Promise

There is something about CLOS CIEN that prospective members consistently underestimate I think, Ali says. It is not the wine, which speaks for itself. It is not the land, which Ignacio del Campo has spent years understanding. It is the team working quietly in the background: the winemakers, the agronomists, the people whose expertise means that members never have to worry about any of it.

“This is exactly how we want it,” he says. “Under the radar. Things just work. That’s the promise we make at the start of every journey. Vineyard ownership without any hassle.”

The wine world is saturated with investment propositions. CLOS CIEN is not trying to be one of them. “This is not you on your own, running a vineyard and managing every aspect of it,” Ali explains. “You have a real asset. You have physical wine that we can help you commercialise. But above all, we’re giving people an alternative asset nestled inside a genuinely unique experience.”

Keeping the Relationship Alive

Vineyard membership is, by nature, a long-distance relationship for most of the year. Members are in London, Geneva, Dubai, or New York while their vines are in Rioja. Ali thinks carefully about how to keep that connection real.

“We keep members up to date through educational pieces and personal insights from their own particular journey. Images, video, whatever brings the vineyard to life from wherever they are. And we’re available at any time to answer questions. About anything really.”

A membership portal is in development. A single, always-on hub where every update, document, and milestone will live. But for Ali, technology is only the infrastructure. The foundation is something more fundamental: transparency.

“One of our core philosophies is transparency. And that’s the way it will always be. We’re proud of that.”

The Moment It Becomes Real

Asked what has made him most proud, Ali does not reach for a metric or a milestone. He reaches for a feeling.

“The first visit over to the bodega. Meeting real people who had taken this on and believed in the project. It’s all good having a concept on paper, but when someone buys into your vision and is willing to join you that’s always a proud moment, beyond words.”

And then there is the second moment. The one that happens for every member, at every visit. The moment the concept becomes physical. The working bodega. The rows of vines. The realisation that it is not a promise anymore it is happening.

“It’s always there — that twinkle of excitement. Every time.”

CLOS CIEN membership is open to a limited number of founding members. To learn more, get in touch with Ali directly.

March at CLOS CIEN.
The vines are waking up. And so, I think, am I.

January was pruning. February, the vine wept its first sap and I learned what it meant. I thought I was beginning to understand the rhythm of this place. Then March arrived and the vineyard changed so completely that I had to start paying attention all over again.

Desborre. Budburst. I had been warned to watch for it. What I was not prepared for was how it would actually feel to see it.

The Morning I Saw It

I was standing at the edge of one of the plots on a morning in mid-March, the kind of clear, cold morning where the Cantabrian Mountains are so sharp you feel like you could reach them. And there, at the tips of the pruning cuts, the first woolly green shoots were pushing out. Small. Almost furry. Unmistakably alive.

After months of bare brown wood and patience, those tiny green points felt enormous.

This is what all of February was building toward. The sap that wept from the cuts last month was the vine’s vascular system clearing itself, sending water and minerals upward. Now that pressure has done its work. When soil temperature tips above a certain point, the buds can no longer hold back. They swell, split their protective coating, and push out the first growth of the 2026 vintage.

The vine has survived winter. The growing season has begun. Your wine is on its way.

Image Source: CLOS CIEN

What I Did Not Know About a Bud

Here is something that changed how I think about these vines entirely. What looks like a single dormant bud on each shoot is actually three buds nested inside each other. Millions of years of evolution with one purpose: the vine survives no matter what.

The primary bud carries this year’s fruit clusters. It is the one everything is organised around. If a late frost kills it, the secondary bud pushes out, carrying roughly half the fruit. If that is lost too, the tertiary bud is the last resort, with almost no fruit but the vine lives.

I keep thinking about this. The vine has been planning for disaster since before humans existed. It is, in the most practical sense, built to last.

Image Source: CLOS CIEN

The First Work of Spring

While the buds were pushing green outside, the team was moving through the vineyard doing two things I had never heard of before.

La Labranza, the first ploughing of spring. A light pass through the cover crops and winter weeds between the vines, turning the green matter into the soil where it breaks down and releases nitrogen exactly when the vine needs it. But also, and this surprised me, sealing moisture in. Ploughing breaks the surface crust and stops the process that pulls water upward through the soil and evaporates it into the air. The winter rains get locked underground so the roots can reach them in July when the vineyard runs dry. I had never thought about soil as something that holds memory. It does.

Then Desnietado, suckering. New shoots appear at the base of the trunk, below the main head of the vine. They are called nietos in Spanish. Grandchildren. They sound charming. They are thieves. Every bit of sap they take is sap the fruit-bearing shoots do not get. In March, while they are still soft, they are snapped off by hand. Tedious, I was told. Essential.

In the Cellar: The Art of the Blend

While the vines were waking up outside, something equally important was happening inside the bodega.

March is the traditional month for El Ensamblaje, the blending. The 2024 harvest has been kept deliberately apart in separate barrels since it was made. Tempranillo from a sandy plot. Graciano from a clay-heavy hillside. Wine from older vines alongside wine from younger ones. Each developing its own character in the dark.

Now Jaione and the technical team sit down with all of it and decide how these separate voices come together to tell one story. I was told that blending sounds romantic. In practice it begins with a notebook, a pipette, and dozens of small glasses. Ninety parts this, ten parts that. Taste blind. Adjust. Repeat.

What eventually goes into the bottle is no longer a collection of parts. It is one thing.

What March Actually Is

I came into this thinking the exciting months would be harvest and budburst. They are. But I am learning that every month here is doing something that matters.

Those first green shoots are your 2026 vintage beginning. The blended wine resting in tank is your 2024 vintage finding its final shape. Both things are happening at the same time. The vineyard is always at multiple points in the story simultaneously.

Next month: the primera inflorescencia, the first tiny flower clusters, the earliest indication of where this year’s grapes will actually form. One of the most fragile moments of the growing season. I am already nervous about the frost.

Want to follow along as my first year at CLOS CIEN unfolds?

Subscribe to the Member Series via our newsletter and I will take you through every month of the vineyard calendar.

The case for Rioja has never been stronger.
And the numbers prove it.

For decades, Bordeaux has been the default answer for serious wine collectors and vineyard investors. The prestige is real. So is the price tag. But a growing number of collectors are asking a different question: what if Bordeaux is no longer the smartest move?

La Rioja is not a consolation prize. It is an active choice, and we think, we know that is for good reason.

The Price Gap Is Not Subtle

Let’s start where the viral conversation always starts: land prices.

In 2024, vineyard land in La Rioja averaged around €40,000 per hectare for dry-farmed plots. Bordeaux-Aquitaine as a whole averaged over €101,000 per hectare. And that figure is dragged down by the entry-level appellations. Step into Saint-Emilion or Pauillac and you are looking at €290,000 to well over €2 million per hectare.

For the same investment that buys you a modest slice of mid-tier Bordeaux, you can own a meaningful, productive parcel in one of the world’s most celebrated wine regions and with room to grow.

And Rioja is growing. La Rioja land prices have risen consistently at around 3% annually over the past two decades, making it one of Spain’s strongest-appreciating wine regions. Bordeaux, by contrast, has seen significant price corrections at the entry and mid-level in recent years.

The Wine Is Not a Compromise

Some collectors hesitate here. They assume “more affordable” means “less serious.” It does not. It’s as simple as nobody had Rioja on their radar before. So that’s why we build CLOS CIEN.

Rioja produces age-worthy, structured reds built on Tempranillo a grape that rewards patience in the cellar just as Cabernet Sauvignon does. The classification system (Crianza, Reserva, Gran Reserva) is driven entirely by ageing requirements, not marketing. A Gran Reserva has spent a minimum of five years maturing before it reaches you, with at least two of those in oak. That is not a shortcut wine now is it?

Bordeaux built its reputation on terroir, tradition, and time. Rioja can match all three! And increasingly, at the international level, it does. Gran Reserva volumes are growing significantly while standard Rioja production softens, a clear signal that the market is moving upmarket.

Terroir That Tells a Story

Rioja sits at an altitude – between 300 and 700 metres above sea level – along the Ebro River, with the Cantabrian Mountains to the north acting as a natural shield against Atlantic rain. The result is a continental climate with warm, dry summers and cold winters. Daily temperature swings during the growing season help grapes develop both sugar and acidity, the combination that produces wines with structure and longevity.

The three sub-zones – Rioja Alta, Rioja Alavesa, and Rioja Oriental – each offer distinct expressions. Clay-limestone soils. Alluvial plains. Iron-rich red earth. The diversity is real, and it creates wines that tell you exactly where they are from.

Bordeaux has its gravel banks and its Left Bank-Right Bank distinction. Rioja has its own layered complexity and it is far less picked over.

Lifestyle and Culture: the Intangible Return

Numbers matter. So does everything else.

Bordeaux is a saturated luxury market. Buying into it today means buying into an established hierarchy where your position is clearly defined from the start.

Rioja is different. The culture is generous, community-minded, and genuinely welcoming to serious newcomers. The food culture – pintxos, local markets, the rhythms of a working vineyard town – is inseparable from the wine. Owners are not just investors; they are participants in something alive.

La Rioja is also one of the most visited wine regions in Spain, with strong gastro-tourism growth. That is not irrelevant when you are thinking about the long-term value of your investment.

Resources used:

• Spanish vineyard land prices (La Rioja ~€40,155/ha, 3% annual appreciation):Vinetur.com – Spanish Vineyard Land Prices Edge Up to €16,327 per Hectare in 2024 Amid Regional Swings (published November 2025)

• Bordeaux-Aquitaine average (€101,100/ha): iDealwine blog – How much does a hectare of vineyard cost? (data from SAFER 2024/2025 report)

• Bordeaux appellation specifics (Saint-Emilion €290,000, Pauillac €2M+): Cross-referenced between the iDealwine blog and Bordeaux Wine Enthusiasts forum (original SAFER figures)

• Gran Reserva market growth signal: wein.plus Wine News – Vineyard prices on the Côte-d’Or continue to rise (March 2026 reference to Rioja losing standard volume but Gran Reserva growing significantly)

• General Bordeaux vineyard price context: Ampelio.fr – French Vineyard Prices: What You Need to Know in 2025 (October 2025)

The Collector’s Summary

The question for collectors and investors is no longer whether Rioja belongs in the same conversation as Bordeaux. It does. The question is whether you want to buy into a market that has already peaked or one that is still finding its ceiling.

Curious about what vineyard ownership in Rioja actually looks like? Explore the CLOS CIEN membership and see how your investment takes root.