Luberri

Rioja Alavesa

Since 1991, in the Alavesa village of Elciego, Bodegas Luberri has been making traditional, terroir-driven wines since 1991, standing as a benchmark for vineyard-focused wines made with honesty and joy.

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Introducing the Estate

A Farmer’s Instincts

Florentino Martínez Monje, the incredible force behind Luberri, is a jovial spirit with a heart the size of Rioja. He’s a self-made cosechero whose incredible talent in the vineyard makes his winemaking look deceptively simple. But make no mistake: Florentino is a serious winemaker who understands Rioja on an instinctive level and knows how to translate his hard work in the vineyard to the cellar.

Never content to maintain the status quo, Florentino helped to resurrect and champion the traditional Rioja Alavesa carbonic maceration style of winemaking. Now in his seventh decade, he continues to experiment with zero-sulfur wines, as well as continuing to refine his single-vineyard and Gran Reserva bottlings. No matter the wine, the Luberri mantra remains the same: maximum respect for terroir and maximum pleasure for the drinker.

History & Origins

Pioneering Work in the Vineyard & Cellar

Florentino Martínez Monje was born into a farming family in San Vicente de la Sonsierra and moved to Elciego when he was eight years old. From the time he was able to walk, he worked with his father and brothers in the vines, learning the skills that now give him the innate ability to judge a vineyard’s quality and how best to bottle terroir.

Early in his winemaking career, Florentino was part of the original Artadi project, where he made wines that were instrumental in the development of modern Rioja and made the press take notice of Rioja’s greatness. But despite Artadi’s success, Florentino felt his calling lay elsewhere; as he says, “you can’t drink points.”

He and his wife, María José founded Bodegas Luberri in 1991, with the aim of making wines that expressed their native Rioja Alavesa and, at the same time, were a style that people genuinely wanted to drink. Today, Florentino makes wines that are fun, lively, and full of depth, with as much joy in the wines as there is in the man who made them.

The Vision Behind Luberri

Building a Legacy

Florentino and María José’s two daughters are the next generation at Luberri. Miren is responsible for the vineyard work, while her sister Laura and husband Carlos are in charge of the vinification and cellar work. Together, they carry on Luberri’s legacy and ensure that winemaking will be a family affair for generations to come.

Process & Philosophy

A Foundation Built on Farming

The Luberri winery is located in the village of Elciego, in the heart of Rioja Alavesa where Florentino and his family farm 35 hectares of old-vine tempranillo, viura, and malvasia. The vineyards are located between the important wine-growing villages of Elciego and Laguardia, with some parcels in La Puebla de Labarca and Villabuena de Álava.

Florentino is responsible for inventing a modified bush-vine system with higher trellising, designed specifically for the conditions of Rioja Alavesa. This allows him to keep yields low while protecting grapes from frosts that can collect at the lower part of the vineyard, producing grapes with great concentration and flavor, as well as remarkable freshness and acidity. All of Luberri’s plots are farmed with great care, and each vineyard site is fermented and vinified separately. Each wine is a well-considered blend of specific neighboring parcels that yield an individual personality for each wine.

In the 1990s, Florentino was a pioneer in resurrecting and perfecting the traditional style of semi-carbonic, whole-cluster winemaking in Rioja Alavesa. This style of fermentation dates back more than two hundred years, before the Bordelaise introduced barrel-aging techniques to Rioja with the arrival of phylloxera, and yields lighter-bodied, fruit forward wines that are incredibly fun to drink.

The Wines

Authentic, Direct, and Passionate

“I’m a straight shooter in life and in wine. This is how our wines are: authentic, direct, and passionate. We try to convey something simple yet profound: our very own personality. The wines of Luberri are the land, climate, our work, and our traditions, all captured in the moment”

— Florentino Martínez Monje

Luberri Zuri (zuri = white in Basque) is a fresh, unoaked white wine made from viura and malvasia from vineyards near the village of Elciego. Crisp, fruity, and minerally, Zuri is a complete and satisfying expression of the mountain vineyards of the Alavesa region, designed to pair well with food and remain crushable by the glass—or porrón.

Luberri Orlegi is not the usual, oak-aged style of wine people associate with Rioja. Instead, Florentino ferments 95 percent tempranillo and 5 percent viura in stainless steel, incorporating the whole-cluster, semi-carbonic fermentation method traditional to Rioja Alavesa. The result is a lighter-bodied, fruit-forward take on tempranillo that is fresh, delicious, and perfect for everyday drinking.

Luberri Seis is a simple wine that is not simple at all. Florentino calls it a “semi-crianza”, his own unofficial term to denote that the wine spends six (or seis, in Spanish) months in oak barrels after first undergoing traditional semi-carbonic fermentation like its younger sibling, Orlegi.

Luberri Biga is named after the number two in Basque (biga) because it was the second wine Florentino made. This Crianza is complex and layered, fun, lively, and simply delicious to drink. It is 100 percent tempranillo from estate vineyards planted on calcareous clay at 520m. The juice is fermented in stainless steel tanks with native yeasts, then racked into French and American oak barrels for 12 months of aging, followed by 12 months in the bottle.

Luberri Gran Reserva is made from two north-facing vineyards called Carrapaganos and Rehoyos, both planted with goblet-trained 80-to-90-year-old tempranillo near the village of Laguardia between 460 and 600m. The wine undergoes alcoholic and malolactic fermentation in new 1,000L French oak foudres, then is racked into two-year-old 225L French barriques where it ages for 12 months before being bottled and rested at least two years before release. Produced only in the best vintages, Gran Reserva stays true to the house philosophy that wine should be incredibly enjoyable right out of the bottle. Plush, luxurious fruit combine with incredible structure and finesse to yield a Gran Reserva that drinks great in the near term while offering additional rewards for further cellar time.

Originally created for Barcelona’s Bar Brutal, Luberri Florus is made with zero sulfur using winemaking methods from the late 19th century. Grapes come from a 60-year-old estate vineyard called Matagallina, co-planted with tempranillo and a little moscatel de alejandría and farmed using biodynamic principles. After a manual harvest and three days of spontaneous fermentation in stainless steel, grapes are foot-trodden and racked into 500L clay amphorae where they continue fermenting without temperature control for ten days. After malolactic fermentation, Florus is bottled directly from the amphorae without fining or filtration, following the biodynamic calendar to take advantage of the natural settling of the lees.

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