Telmo Rodríguez: the eternal battle
“All my life I’ve been forbidden. But I think it’s the way: if you’re not forbidden, you are doing something wrong,” says Telmo Rodríguez.
The charismatic winemaker is 61, but he’s been fighting for Spanish wine’s reputation since he returned from his studies in Bordeaux in the 1990s. Today he sells wine via La Place, and it’s hard to imagine him as not part of the establishment. And yet he’s not done fighting.
While we talk much about Matallana – his Ribera del Duero project – it’s hard not to discuss what’s happening in Rioja today. He’s clear that the houses on which the region’s commercial name has been built are responsible for many of the challenges it faces today, with terrifyingly low fruit prices that put the economic viability of its wines in question. He tells me that CVNE pay just 60 cents per kilo (he pays around double that). “We should denounce these people. You’re killing Rioja. You’re killing the culture and you’re killing the families,” he says.
He’s not exactly shy and retiring. “Sometimes people think that I’m very aggressive… because I say things that they don’t like to hear.” I, for one, loved hearing what he had to say.
