Telmo Rodríguez

The Free Bacchus Story

Telmo Rodríguez left his family's Rioja estate in the 1990s and spent the following decades doing something unusual: travelling Spain looking for forgotten vineyards in regions the modern industry had written off, and restarting them.

Málaga, Rueda, Toro, Cebreros, Rías Baixas — the project has been to recover old plantings and local varieties before they disappeared entirely, which in several cases happened with a few years to spare. The farming across the estates is organic and biodynamic in practice.

Eighty hectares, divided into three hundred and fifty-five separate plots scattered from Málaga to Valdeorras, at an average of under a quarter of a hectare each. This is the precise opposite of how a modern wine business is assembled.

Las Beatas, the recovered hillside in Rioja Alavesa, is the flagship at around three hundred and fifty dollars. Tim Atkin's Rioja Report has awarded Gold.

This was a Track B listing until August 2026, on the basis that certification was underway. It has since completed, and we checked it against the register rather than take the estate’s word. Spanish organic certification is territorial, so a producer farming five regions certifies five times: the EU register returns current certificates under four separate control bodies, each covering unprocessed plants — the farming itself — as well as wine.