Cortijo means ?cottage? or ?shack,? a reference to the fact that shacks, often times, make better wine than most high-flown Chateaux in Rioja. The Philosophy of Cortijo is very simple yet very effective: to make better wine, you need to harvest better grapes. Cortijo improves the quality of its wines by doing a better job in the vineyards. Rather than building a chateau or a beautiful tasting room, Cortijo pays to take care of the only meaningful ingredient, the grapes. Beginning with the 2009 vintage, Cortijo is made with estate-owned grapes. The goal with Cortijo is to show a pure, youthful expression of Rioja Alta. Cortijo is a sort of ?non-profit organization?. It is very difficult to find such a pure expression of Rioja at this price point.
