Sandra Bravo of Sierra de Toloño is considered one of the best young winemakers in the world. In just ten years, she has risen to the highest echelons of Rioja producers, culminating in MW Tim Atkin naming Sierra de Toloño to his 'First Growth Group' in his authoritative 2023 Rioja Report alongside the dynastic greats like Vega Sicilia, Remelluri, and López de Heredia.
Born in Haro, the commercial heart of Rioja, and today located in Rioja Alavesa, the rustic plinth of Rioja’s pilgrim soul, Sandra has honed a mastery of high-elevation, old-vine farming. And her hard-won talent in the cellar is all about delicacy. Minimalist, traditional winemaking has made her examples of Tempranillo, Viura, and Garnacha undisputed icons of this sublime sub-region.
Growing up in Rioja surrounded by wine, it made sense for Bravo to study enology at the University of La Rioja, then transferring to the enology program at Toulouse in France. She followed on with work in Bordeaux, Chianti, Marlborough, California, and finally in Priorat for seven of her most formative years where she met her friend Ricard Rofes (now in charge of Scala Dei) who increased her inspiration and devotion to old-vine Spanish revivalism. It was then she was finally inspired to return to her home to Rioja to craft terroir wines of a similar, Burgundian, traditionalist ilk.
Sandra was able to purchase some of the oldest and highest elevation micro-plots on the Alavesa side of the Ebro, the smallest of Rioja’s three sub-zones. This chillier, bucolic area is the perfect terroir for Sandra’s style, being the northernmost part of Rioja most exposed to the Atlantic Ocean’s cooling influence.
Like many of the greatest winemakers, Sandra is a farmer first, believing the key to great wine is working intimately with the land that grows it. Her goal after every harvest is to let the grapes speak for themselves. This is why she focuses on using traditional techniques, intervening as little as possible in the vineyard and the cellar, and opting for larger and older oak vessels and terracotta amphoras to produce wines that are a crystalline expression of the sites where they’re grown. These wizened old bush vines give remarkable nuance without recourse to the long ageing Rioja is famous for (yet her wines are no less age-worthy).
Tasted blind, many of Rioja’s hallmarks are attributable to their long exposure to oxygen in the cellars, barrel or otherwise, and the region’s unique predilection for American oak. The richness and well-restrained power of these famed wines is wonderful. Let us not be confused—we are here for the whole spectrum of remarkable Rioja—but Sandra’s wines are quite different. By no means are her Tempranillo’s and Viura’s a repudiation of these classic styles, but rather they give a different view into what Rioja can be from an equally rewarding alternate lens. The term Burgundian is bandied about so often as to lose its meaning, but here we have a terrific example — these are renderings of Tempranillo and Garnacha and Viura that truly put the site and the fruit on the pedestal in plain sight, revealing the unmitigated complexity of these ageless vines’ fruit.
