Bodega Contador

Driven by a deep passion for his native land, Benjamín Romeo founded Bodega Contador with the aim of producing some of the best wines in Rioja.

In 1995, Benjamín Romeo bought the minuscule underground cellar - locally known as “Cueva”, the Spanish for “Cave” - of an abandoned castle in San Vicente de la Sonsierra, in La Rioja. In 1996, he released the first vintage of La Cueva de Contador and began buying vineyards for his future projects. Constrained by the space limitations of the “Cueva”, in 2004 he moved to a garage. There he produced the 2004 and 2005 vintages of his new wine Contador, which earn him numerous awards and no less than 100 Parker points. From that moment on, the thing exploded and he became one of the household names of a loose but nevertheless influential movement known as “The New Rioja”

Thanks to his critical and commercial success, Benjamín got the means to built a new winery, Contador winery, whose construction started in 2006 and was finished in 2008. The building is surrounded by over 50 hectares of trellis-trained and organically farmed vineyards which grow under a Continental climate. Among many others, one interesting factor of the winemaking techniques performed by Bodega Contador is that all of its wines are fermented in truncated cone-shaped, 10,000-litre oak vats. Thus, the wines do no get any of the metallic notes occasionally brought about by stainless steel tanks.

Year of foundation: 1995
Address: Crtra. a Baños de Ebro, Km. 1
City: San Vicente de la Sonsierra
Province: La Rioja
Zip code: 26338
Country: Spain
Phone number: 34 941 334 228
www.bodegacontador.com
Guided visits? Yes
Wine tourism services? Yes