Mayela is a label by the founders of Bideona that showcases a contemporary reinterpretation of the grower (cosechero) tradition of Rioja Alavesa. A hundred years ago, cosechero wines were made by dumping whole-cluster grapes into a lagar and letting carbonic maceration do the work. Once fermentation was complete, the wine, stems, and skins were foot-trodden, and then the wine was drained and bottled. Almost all Rioja was made this way until the beginning of the 19th century, when it was discovered that wines from Bordeaux arrived to the new world Spanish colonies in good shape, but the Riojas were often oxidized. The Bordeaux style (de-stemming, fermentation and aging in small wooden barrels) became à la mode, with Marques de Riscal being among the first leaders of this fuller-bodied, more oaky style of winemaking. Still, the cosechero tradition remains today in very small numbers.

The idea with Mayela was to create a “cosechero 2.0”, which still pays homage to the growers but avoids methods that founder Andreas Kubach MW feels would erase all sense of place within the bottle. Instead, these wines, which come from the slopes of the Sierra Cantabria, are made without carbonic maceration to preserve the wine’s provenance and personality.

In fact, personality is what Mayela is all about. The whole brand is made up of one wine bottled with six different labels featuring illustrations of their growers. The idea is to contribute to the preservation of traditional viticulture and to the sustainability of old vineyards in Rioja Alavesa, which has a high proportion of historic vineyards planted on hillside terraces. It also has a cooler, sunny, high elevation climate and limestone-clay soils that differ from the alluvial, iron-rich soils of the lower sub-regions Rioja Alta and Rioja Oriental.

Mayela represents a new way of thinking about Rioja’s grower wines. Andreas is known for championing wines of place (expressing terroir as the priority) rather than wines of style (expressing winemaking or aging techniques as the priority). The wines are still made with the small-grower, cosechero ethos and are made mostly for the local gastronomy – think fresh and approachable – but still show the depth and purity typical of Rioja Alavesa. With such care and attention given to site, Mayela is a new-wave label that is really just following pre-industrialization methods. This is a back to basics wine, through and through.