Contrebia

Why do we call our tempranillo blanco wine Ontañón Contrebia?

Tempranillo blanco is an indigenous variety and unique to Rioja, as it was in our region that it appeared as the result of a natural mutation in a single red tempranillo vine plant in the nineteen eighties. This means that here we have a variety which is unique in the whole world, as Riojan as can be, and exclusive to our appellation.

To say tempranillo blanco is to say Rioja and also Rioja Oriental, because it was in Murillo de Río Leza (a small town in this zone) that a grower found a spur on a red grape vine which each year would produce white grapes. A quirk of nature? Maybe. The thing is, our generation has had the honour of witnessing the birth of a new variety and within just a few years its integration in the catalogue of approved varieties of the Control Board, after a scientific and sensory process in which its qualities and organoleptic values were studied in depth.

Moreover, numerous theories exist regarding the roots of vine cultivation in Rioja and when and how the primitive winemaking techniques reached our land in different eras of history. The oldest existing document making reference to the presence of vines in La Rioja dates from the year 873. Specifically, it appears in the Cartulary of San Millán and speaks of a donation in which the Monastery of San Andrés de Trepeana appears (nowadays the locality of Treviana, in Rioja Alta).

Cartulary of San Millán, from the year 873.

However, although the arrival of viticulture in La Rioja was believed to be related to the time of Romanisation of the Iberian Peninsula and in particular, of the Ebro Valley, the discovery of a wine press in the Celtiberian settlement of Contrebia Leucade, in Aguilar del Río Alhama (in Rioja Oriental), has confirmed that its inhabitants were already making wine in a generalised way at least since the second century before the Christian Era. The director of the excavations, José Antonio Hernández Vera, gave an interview to the newspaper Diario La Rioja about such a unique find. It was a wine press located in the northern sector of the Celtiberian city, of which the general structure has survived: the grape treading basin and the ‘torcos’, that is, the pools into which the pressed must ran. “It was used at the time of the harvest and once this was over it was cleaned and used for other purposes, such as storing the wine in large jars”.

The archaeological site of the Celtiberian city of Contrebia Leucade.

Ontañón Contrebia has been created to pay homage to the most distant history of viticulture in Rioja through the fusion with a Rioja variety which appeared thanks to a happy quirk of nature (*), a history that has seen the passing of more than two thousand two hundred years and which is excited to reflect the ties between our land and vine cultivation and winemaking. It is undoubtedly one of our main identifying features: historical viticulture and a variety which in unique and indigenous to Rioja. What better combination to name such a Riojan wine and so rooted to the land where the first wines began to be made in a region which over the centuries has become the standard bearer for Spanish and European wine?

History of Contrebia Leucade
Contrebia Leucade is one of the most historically interesting and architecturally conserved Celtiberian sites in the Iberian Peninsula. Its oldest remains date back to the start of the first millennium BC. The vestiges and ruins of the city are located within the boundaries of  Aguilar del Río Alhama, very close to the Inestrillas quarter, at the mid-point of the course of this tributary on the right bank of the Ebro, and are accessible and open to visits.

In his doctoral thesis, defended on 22 May 1978, Professor José Antonio Hernández Vera states the first settlement of Contrebia Leucade was restricted to the hilltop of the western side and was founded in an advanced moment during the First Iron Age. Between the second half of the 4^th and first half of the third centuries BC, the population of the first settlement was boosted by newcomers from the central plateau, the Meseta, who crossed the barrier of the Iberian System to reach the line formed by the Ebro. These new inhabitants belonged to the Arevaco tribe, a pre-Roman, Celtiberian people settled in an area between the mountains of the Iberian System and the Duero valley, bordering with the Vacceans to the west, a tribe established in the eastern-central part of the Iberian Peninsula in modern-day Spain. Rome formed auxiliary troops with the Arevaci for the imperial army. These gave the settlement its historical name of Contrebia Leucade. With their arrival it took on its definitive layout. The surface area of the initial settlement was substantially increased towards the valley and the immediate mountain and from there they fought back the arrival of the Romans.

Contrebia took active part in the Sertorian wars. It was besieged and taken in the year 77 BC, after 40 years of siege. This fact did not lead to its destruction or abandonment, as Sertorius himself established an important base for supplies and troops in Contrebia. It wasn’t until the Early Middle Ages that the settlement became uninhabited after a more precarious period of decline.

What does Contrebia Leucade mean?
Its etymology is Celtic and it has various meanings: group of dwellings, communal living, collection of houses, settlement. In the case of the Riojan settlement, the place-name is qualified with the adjective ‘Leucade’, which refers to the colour white so that taken together, Contrebia Leucade means “White City’.

Wine in Contrebia

“We are, by a long way, dealing
here with the oldest wine presses
in the whole of La Rioja”

José Antonio Hernández Vera, at the Contrebia Leucade archaeological site.

José Antonio Hernández Vera, archaeologist and director of the excavations, explained how wine was made in Contrebia: “The basin, where the grapes were trodden, is the fundamental element. The must fell into the tanks. From here it was removed and poured into large dolia or earthenware vats, where fermentation took place. Significant pieces of these vessels have been found filling the pools. It is curious because one of the fragments bears two Iberian letters belonging to the language spoken by the inhabitants who were living in the city before the Roman conquest“.

Hernández Vera, who is also Emeritus professor of Prehistory at the University of Zaragoza, stresses that “by a long way, these are the oldest wine presses in the whole of La Rioja. There are two perfectly conserved examples and another three which are not complete. It is clear that the inhabitants of Contrebia were systematically making wine. As well as these structures, there are also rooms devoted to storing large dolia”.

The three wine presses discovered in Contrebia Leucade belonged to private homes and were located on the ground floor of the houses. The first, which was discovered in the nineteen nineties, was identified as being simply an industrial type of installation, but it was “in very poor state of conservation”. The second was found in the southernmost point of the city in 2004 and was better conserved, but the third wine press, discovered in 2011, is much bigger than the earlier ones, which would seem to suggest that the production would be greater than needed for the family’s consumption and that, in part, it would be sold in the settlement and in neighbouring cities.

Contrebia Leucade can be considered the place where the first steps in winemaking were taken in the lands which are nowadays part of La Rioja and that the inhabitants of these lands were making wine in a very similar way to that which was still being employed in many houses and bodega quarters until only a few decades ago.