By ERIC ASIMOV


HARO, Spain - As the R. Lopez de Heredia winery has stayed true to its time-honored techniques, the rest of the wine-producing world has spent decades trying to improve what it does, only to come practically full circle, ending up where Lopez de Heredia has been all along.

The 132-year-old winery guards its traditions as proudly as any in the world, especially in a region like Rioja, which has been swept by profound changes in the last 25 years.

Almost alone, the winery clings to the notion that it must age its wines until they are ready to drink. Rioja requires gran reserva wines to receive a minimum of six years of aging before they can be released. The current vintage for many gran reserva producers is 2001. Lopez de Heredia has just released gran reservas from 1991 and 1987, exquisitely graceful wines that show the finesse that comes of long aging.

And these are just the red wines. Lopez de Heredia makes white Riojas that age just as well.

Red or white, the wines are great values, starting at $25 to $50 for crianzas and reservas, which can be 10 to 20 years old. Even 20-year-old gran reservas will be under $100, a bargain compared to French or Italian wines of similar age and quality.

But while Lopez de Heredia’s wines are almost singular, its ideas about growing grapes and making wines have become increasingly influential, regardless of stylistic concerns.

For more than 50 years after World War II, the great wine regions of the world sought to modernize. Where once hard labor was the only method to grow grapes, growers and producers everywhere seized the chance to mechanize; to deploy chemical pesticides, herbicides and fungicides, to adopt the latest technological recommendations.

Some technology was useful. But, too late, many learned that chemicals were killing the soil, and that techniques to increase vineyard yields also diminished the quality of the grapes. All over the wine-producing world, the brightest winemakers have set out to relearn the wisdom and techniques of their grandparents. All, except for one Rioja producer right here in Haro.

“We don’t need to, we never lost it,” said Maria Jose Lopez de Heredia, who today, with her sister, Mercedes; brother, Julio Cesar; and father, Pedro, runs the winery founded by her great-grandfather. “New technology is fine, but you can’t forget the logic of history.”

For decades, Rioja has emphasized brand over terroir. Many of the biggest names bought grapes from different parts of the region, blending them to make wines that fit a house style but revealed little sense of place.

But Lopez de Heredia, and a few others in the old guard, like Marques de Murrieta, have always owned their own vineyards and grown their own grapes. The Lopez wines, which come from four distinct vineyards, almost always show characteristics of their site.

Today, a growing number of smaller and younger producers are, like Lopez de Heredia, trying to show a sense of place in their wines, by gaining control of vineyards, improving their viticulture and becoming more conscious of the ideals of terroir.

“The old producers wanted to show a brand, not a place,” said Telmo Rodriguez, who produces wine all over Spain and has recently, with a partner, opened a small, sleek winery, made of earth and old barrel staves, in the village of Lanciego east of Haro. “I want to make a wine that could show a village.”

Mr. Rodriguez venerates Lopez de Heredia. “For me, the only winery that works in an authentic way is Lopez,” he said. “Their vineyards are still worked in a traditional way with direct links to the past.”

Driving through the gently rolling Rioja terrain, it is becoming harder to find vineyards planted in the older bush-vine style, their scraggly canes trained upward from thick, free-standing trunks. With the encouragement of agricultural authorities, more and more of the vines are now trained on neat rows of wire trellises, which make vineyards easier to negotiate with tractors and to harvest mechanically.

Mr. Rodriguez abhors the changes, and has sought to buy old fields of bush vines, which he says are crucial to good Rioja. “We are more obsessed with authenticity than beauty,” he said.

At Lopez de Heredia, there is a serenity that comes with adherence to core principles. For many years, the winery was criticized at home for being backward and old-fashioned. Appreciation came instead from its export markets.

“Acceptance overseas has people here in Spain reconsidering our wines,” Ms. Lopez de Heredia said. “There are people who want to go back again, and we are happy to teach.”





At the R. Lopez de Heredia winery in Spain’s Rioja region, bottles age for years. Another vintner in the region, Telmo Rodriguez, values traditional methods employed at Lopez.