It always takes someone who is prepared to break the mould.

One of the many things that gives you that ‘punch the air’ moment in this business is when you find a range of wines that have the x-factor, delivering something different and unique that others can’t emulate. That’s exactly what Bodegas Exopto has brought to our range of Rioja wines.

In his first interview with Curious Wines, winemaker and Bordeaux native Tom Puyaubert explains how he went from selling oak barrels in La Rioja to producing world-class wines that would gain world-wide recognition in under ten years.

To view our introduction to Bodegas Exopto, click here.

1. Tom, you’ve been in La Rioja since 2000. Why did you decide to start making wine there, and not in your native Bordeaux?

I moved to Rioja in 2000. I was training for a famous french cooperage that was setting up a subsidiary in Spain. This experience allowed me to be in touch with most of the best Spanish winemakers, to exchange knowledge and learn from them.

It was very exciting to compare my winemaking background (USA and Bordeaux mainly) with their knowledge and feelings about the Rioja soils, terroir and grapes. I always knew I would make my own wine one day, the place didn’t import much but I really fell in love with the Rioja region.

The region certainly has the most complete and rich heritage of Spanish viticulture. First of all because of the age of its vineyard, it’s not unusual to find 60 to 80 years old small plots that give fantastic wines in terms of concentration, complexity and structure. Combined with a fantastic terroir influenced by the Sierra Cantabria, a mountain range that protects the vineyards from bad weather, I thought all the conditions were there to make a great wine.

Moreover, I thought it was very challenging at the beginning of 2000 to make a different Rioja, in terms in winemaking and blends, and break with the traditional reserva and crianza.

2. Tempranillo is obviously a very important grape variety in La Rioja. What variety performs particularly well for you? Is there one that you believe gives real distinction or personality to your wines?

Tempranillo is definitely the Soul of Rioja and we have to respect it. It is the basis of the wine and its structure. Most of Riojas are made out of 100% Tempranillo, which I don’t really understand when you’re “allowed” to work with two other fantastic grapes that are Garnacha and Graciano. It’s maybe because of my French influence I like to blend. I thought it so interesting to blend the three varieties depending on the wine you want to make. They’re so different but complete themselves very well at the time.

As I said, Tempranillo will bring the structure, Garnacha will be used for its fruitiness and sweetness, meanwhile Graciano will bring complexity and good freshness.

Winemaking is like cooking! Actually, in all three reds I’m producing you’ll find the three grape varieties but with a majority of Garnacha in Bozeto (fruity and easy to drink), Tempranillo in Horizonte (structure and Rioja Style), and Graciano in Exopto (Complexity and freshness).

3. Your range has had some amazing recognition from wine competitions all over the world, and also from Robert Parker in the US. What do the big scores and medals mean to you, and what makes something like the Bozeto so celebrated?

This is a complicated question to answer. For a small winery like mine, scores and competitions are very important to promote the wines all other the world. We don’t have the financial structure to travel and present the wines, so getting good press reviews helps a lot.

On the other hand it might be dangerous to depend too much on scores. They must be an indication for the consumer who must never forget that his own opinion is much more important than the press.

Concerning bozeto, I think the really good acceptance by the international press is due to the new character of the product: a high presence of Garnacha, big fruit, just a hint of oak. This is a really new style in Rioja, very surprising and that combines fruit and freshness of young wines with the structure and elegance of oak aged wines.

4. Is there a wine that you most look forward to every year, or one that you enjoy making more than any other?

Our top cuvée Exopto of course! First of all because we don’t produce it every year. It’s made from 60% Graciano, which is a very complicated grape to grow and ripen. It’s a lot of work in the vineyard, keeping the yields low. You need some luck as you need really good ripening conditions during the last three weeks. If you don’t get a perfect ripening period, Graciano is just awful (green, aggressive).

It’s completed by 90-year-old Tempranillo vines that are also fantastic to work with. It’s incredible to see how different the grapes (and then the wines) are. More concentration, more tannins, more of everything!

Our Horizonte white is also a challenging wine that we keep working at. Rioja is not especially known to produce great whites, but the blend of grapes is interesting (Viura, Malvasia, Garnacha Blanc) and combined with a good aging program, I’m sure we’ll make a great white wine.

5. You’ve just bottled the 2011 Bozeto and the 2010 Exopto and Horizonte. How are they drinking now, and is everything going to plan ahead of the 2012 Harvest?

2010 and 2011 were really good vintages, all conditions were there to make great wines. This is an interesting question. Of course, if you drink these wines now you’ll see a very modern style: fresh fruit, intensity and power in the mouth and also a great dark colour. Just like a wine should be when it’s been recently bottled. Some consumers love this kind of wine, that’s why I like to put them on the market early.

But what is very important also is that these wines can age very well. All the wines we are producing are aging well (bozeto included), they all have the important characteristics (acidity mainly) that will allow to age well. They’ll then become more “classic”, developing a good bouquet of spices, tannins will be polished and sensations will be different.

When people ask me “Do you produce classical or modern Rioja?” I usually answer “It depends on the moment you drink them.”

6. As a French winemaker working and living in Spain, you’re almost certainly going to say that terroir is more important than the winemaker, but what do you think makes your wines unique to any other winemaker in La Rioja?

Of course the terroir is very important, I talked about it before. The choice of vineyard, soil and climate is the best step to making a good wine. You then have to improve, you have to give it your own character and soul.

First, our wines are different because they blend Tempranillo, Garnacha and Graciano, which is quite unusual. Then our winemaking process is quite different from the traditional rioja style. We ferment in concrete and oak vats that respect the fruit and colours. We also use these vats to age the wines (Garnacha mainly) when most of the wineries age in old American oak barrels. Our barrels are all french oak barrels, more elegant and respectful to the wines.

7. Lastly, Tom, do you have a desert island wine? A wine that you would take to heaven with you if you could?

Quite hard to answer. I think you expect me to pick some of my wines, though I love to drink other wines from the Rhone Valley, Pomerol, Margaux, Moulis, Saint Estephe.

The desert island wine could be Horizonte Red 2006, certainly the best I’ve ever made. Very well balanced, elegant, really good integration of the oak and good freshness at the time!

As I hope I’ll go to Heaven as late as possible, I’ll have to pick a wine that ages well in the bottle, this would need to be Exopto because of its high proportion of Graciano with great acidity that allows the wine to keep all its body and gain in complexity through the years.

Exopto 2009 would be my pick.

Finding a Rioja winery who is willing to sell is easy. Finding one that doesn’t necessarily follow the status quo (different in our eyes is always interesting and curious), yet still manages to excel at everything they do – that can be a little more difficult.

Introducing Bodegas Exopto, a winery that we feel lives by similar principles and values to ourselves. A commitment to being the best at what you can be through hard work and passion, and ultimately deliver pleasure and happiness to everyone you come in contact with.

Tom Puyaubert arrived in Spain at the beginning of 2000, leaving behind his native land of Bordeaux in order to increase sales in La Rioja for a famous French cooperage. In daily contact with the best winemakers in Spain, he became enthralled with the region, its vineyards, culture and whole way of life. In 2003, he decided to set up Bodegas Exopto so that he could strengthen his ties with the region and express its character through a range of distinctive, original white and red wines.

Tom continues to work in the selling of barrels made by the French cooperage Saury, which allows him to keep in contact with his customers and continually learn.

In total there are about ten hectares of vineyards which he works on and uses in the wine production. These ten hectares are divided up into fifteen “micro-parcels” that have bush-trained vines of considerable age, ranging from thirty to ninety years old.

The choice of vineyards is based on the idea of combination: different types of soil, orientation, altitude, and especially climate and terroir. All the Tempranillo vineyards are located in the town of Abalos, in the Rioja Alta, where the climate enjoys an Atlantic influence and is better suited to expressing the refinement and complexity of this variety.

The Garnacha and Graciano vineyards are mostly situated on the hillsides of Monte Yerga in the south of La Rioja. The vineyards there are influenced by the Mediterranean, an essential climatic condition for developing the Garnacha properly and for full maturity of the Graciano.

His winemaking practices are different, not only because of his use of the relatively rare Graciano variety, but he is keen on using concrete vats to ferment and age his wines, and instead of using American oak, he uses the best French oak he can get his hands on. If you’re in the right business, why not use the best?

Bozeto de Exopto 2010

El Bozeto, as its name (sketch, outline) suggests, was Tom’s first wine project representing all three red grape varieties. It’s young & fresh with an explosion of fruity aromas & touches of oak.

Jay Miller, Robert Parker’s Wine Advocate: “Exopto Cellars’ purple-coloured 2010 Bozeto de Exopto is a blend of 50% Garnacha, 40% Tempranillo, and 10% Graciano aged in oak for 9 months. Aromas of crushed pepper, balsam wood, violets, cinnamon, and blackberry inform the nose of a sweetly-fruited, vibrant, well-balanced Rioja. It can be approached now but has the stuffing to fill out for another 1-2 years. This outstanding value will deliver plenty of enjoyment through 2018+.” 90+ points

Horizonte de Exopto Tinto 2009

This was the first wine Tom made in 2003. Its base is Tempranillo, La Rioja’s principal grape variety, but made in a different style, highlighting his clear intention to create wines which are more modern, intense, highly-coloured and with just the right amount of oak.

Tom says, “to be perfectly frank, we have to admit that at the beginning there was only going to be one red wine: Exopto… but after our first vintage, we thought we could do it better or at least differently – hence the name ‘horizonte’ (horizon)… suggesting that EXOPTO might appear – but that’s another story…”

Silver Medal: Decanter World Wine Awards 2012
90 points: Peñin Guide
Wine & Food Horizen: Top 300 wines of Spain

Horizonte de Exopto Blanco 2010

In times past, it was quite usual to plant white variety vines in a red grape vineyard parcel, for reasons far removed from how things are conducted today, because the white grape varieties were more productive and could compensate for low yields from the poorest soils. In addition, the white varieties, more susceptible to disease, were able to predict the likely need for treating the rest of the red vineyard.

Viura, Malvasía and Garnacha Blanca were planted indiscriminately – therefore it is difficult to ascertain what percentage of each variety the wine has, due to the vines being scattered all over the red grape vineyard.

Exopto Cuvée Luca 2009

The winery’s Top of the Range – the purest expression of the Graciano variety. After three harvests spent getting to know the vineyards, their grapes and the best way of growing them, Tom reached the conclusion that the wine he so longed for would be Graciano-based. From its great complexity, aromatic finesse and freshness, this is a very distinctive wine to rival the greatest of fine wines.

Gold Medal: Concours Mondial de Bruxelles des Vins 2012

To view the range from Bodegas Exopto, click here. As part of the Spanish sale there is 20% off until the end of August, except Cuvée Luca, which is an allocation wine.