Jorge Navascués, the new visible face of Contino.
He has always teamed up with his father and mentor, Jesús, who is still active, “one of the first driving winemakers”, or local winemakers, before wine technicians flew between continents. With him he discovered the world of wine in an intimate way. “It was very nice to do four or five harvests in the same season but in several areas.
In 2017, he was offered to join Contino as technical director, as a dream come true, “one of those trains that only passes once in a lifetime. It has been four years and five vintages, but every time I enter the winery, I pinch myself to know it’s real. I try to enjoy every second”.
Does Contino still live that ambition of being the great Rioja “château” as born in 1973?
It is a small winery of just over sixty hectares that includes micro-plots: there are alluvial, sandy, rocky, calcareous soils… In 400 meters we harvest ten days apart. The Ebro river delimits it and provides very beneficial humidity on summer nights.
We are in the warmest part of the Rioja Alavesa, almost closer to Logroño than to Laguardia, so the climate is no longer so continental and has a Mediterranean part, with the advantage that we are very close to the Sierra de Cantabria, which provides freshness.
The winery is beautiful and was conceived from the beginning with great criteria, excellent technology and winemaking style using concrete and large wooden vats. And today, when the theme of the Singular Vineyard is so much in vogue, Contino is still one of the best examples in our country, with that Bordeaux touch that the vineyards surrounding the winery gives, and the vocation to value a mixture of the different microplots.
For me there is nothing more modern than a renewed classic, and that is Contino.
