Miguel Merino: A Personal Remembrance

Miguel Merino Sr. and Jr.

Miguel Merino, founder of Bodega Miguel Merino, passed away on October 31 after a long illness.

Most people in Rioja today knew Miguel as the jovial owner of the winery he founded in 1994.  Miguel however, was a 44 year veteran of the Rioja wine trade, having begun his career as one of the two export directors of Bodegas Berberana, at that time one of Rioja’s powerhouses along with Paternina, AGE and Savin, the parent company of Bodegas Campo Viejo.

I met Miguel shortly after my arrival in Rioja in 1983 as the export director of bottled wines for Savin and we soon became friends because of our mutual love of wine and music, more specifically, rock and roll.

Because we traveled most of the time we used to joke that we saw each other more often in New York, London and Stockholm than in Logroño.  It was an incentive to meet at home more often between trips.

 Berberana was bought by Rumasa in 1980 and after a few years with the winery under its new owners, Miguel, along with his former managing director Melquíades Entrena and another executive, Félix Pérez, founded Cenalsa, an export consortium. Miguel soon tired of driving back and forth from Logroño to Pamplona and fighting to get distribution for the wines he represented in an increasingly competitive marketplace, so in 1994 he founded his own winery in Briones.

Today it’s not uncommon for a winemaker or a grape grower to found a winery, but Miguel was neither. His decision was both gutsy and risky, but he never looked back.  He sought advice from experts – for winemaking, Manuel Ruiz Hernández, the longtime technician at the Haro Enological Laboratory; for grape and wine supply the powerful broker Pedro Vivanco; and from friends like Lars Torstensson, one of the two former wine buyers at Sweden’s Vin & Sprit.  The other buyer, Arne Skog, became Miguel’s distributor in Sweden when Skog founded Domaine Wines & Spirits.

Miguel’s philosophy was to have fun with his wines and his winery, vowing only to do business with friends and former customers.  To visit him was to be regaled with stories about his adventures as a wine salesman and countless jokes and anecdotes as you sat around the table in his tasting room.

Miguel telling a story soon after founding the winery

Among the many stories he told, one stands out in my mind. Miguel was at a wine fair negotiating with a German-speaking buyer, ostensibly for a discount supermarket chain.  Miguel saw that there was no way he could make a deal, so when the buyer was leaving, he told Miguel “Auf wiedersehen” (‘goodbye’ in German).  Miguel answered, without missing a beat, with the similar sounding “¡Olvídense!” (‘forget it’) in Spanish!

As I mentioned earlier, Miguel’s other love was rock and roll, developed during a yearlong stay in the USA as an exchange student.  Throughout his life he referred to his hosts as “my American family” and he visited them as often as possible. 

Miguel and I used to listen to music at a home he owned in Trevijano in the mountains southeast of Logroño.  This was long before the internet so we relied on the 45 and 33⅓ rpm records in our collections.  There was one particular song we couldn’t find: 96 Tears by ? And the Mysterians, one of Miguel’s favorite’s.  He finally found a copy. Whenever I hear it I think of Miguel. 

Miguel was a pioneer in his winery with the launch of Mazuelo de la Quinta Cruz, a plot of the mazuelo grape variety near the fifth station of the Via Crucis on Monte Calvario (Mt. Calvary) near Briones.  Lars Torstensson, who had become the director of Domaine Rabiega, Vin & Sprit’s winery in Provence, was experimenting with carignan (a synonym for mazuelo), so they decided to make a 100% mazuelo, Rioja’s first.  It became popular in Spain because of a listing at Andoni Luis Aduriz’s  two Michelin-starred Mugaritz near San Sebastian where it was paired with dishes that defied pairing with other wines.  Quinta Cruz gained notoriety internationally, too as Decanter magazine’s “Best Old World Red” in 2007. 

Miguel’s grape selection process echoed his sense of humor. As the grapes were unloaded onto the sorting table they were inspected.  One of three possible events occurred:  the unsuitable grapes were thrown into a bucket called ‘infierno’ (hell), the doubtful grapes were thrown into another bucket called ‘purgatorio’ (purgatory) and the other grapes –  ‘cielo’ (heaven) were allowed to pass through to the destemmer/crusher.  The good grapes would become Miguel Merino wines and the ‘purgatory’ grapes made into a second, inexpensive product for workers in the winery and friends.

Miguel’s legacy is guaranteed with Miguel’s son taking over operations at the winery along with wife Érica.

With Miguel’s passing, Rioja has lost one of its most endearing and lovable characters.  Rest in peace, my friend.