Bodegas Ochoa

When quality truly arrived in Navarra in the 1980s, it was the legendary Javier Ochoa who stood right in the thick of it, experimenting as head of Evena (Estación de Viticultura y Enología de Navarra), developing and sharing his conclusions with the world. At the same time, he built up his own sound, or rather his own style. Ochoa's wines came to stand early on in "New Navarra" for the modern, vibrant Navarra fruit. Since then, a great deal of wine has flowed down throats, and today Javier and Mariví's children, Adriana and Beatriz, have taken the bodega into the present day. This does not mean that Javier's revolutionary, fruit-driven style has been abandoned, only that it has been complemented by the daughters' ambitious development projects (the apple never falls far from the tree and all that). But the Ochoa story actually begins much earlier. Already some 160 years and six generations ago, the family was active as wine growers in Navarra. Today they manage 145 hectares, the majority of which is organically certified (some land is under conversion). Alongside grapes, olives are also cultivated, and the bodega's olive oils are, like the wines, highly regarded. The appetite for experimentation is great and the development projects are many: how stress-tolerant are the vines when it comes to drought? What works best for cover cropping between the vineyard rows? Can we make good sparkling wine with low alcohol? New plantings are done with cuttings from the estate's own vineyards, and the yeast used consists primarily of four strains that have been isolated in their own vineyards and subsequently cultivated for use in their own cellars. We don't think we're exaggerating when we say that the Ochoa family represents both the most innovative and the most traditional when it comes to wine in Navarra. In any case, we are very happy to work with this family, who are as friendly as they are skilled in the art of wine.