@timatkin
HE’S GOT BOTTLE: Rodríguez is about to win a yearlong battle to change the wines of Rioja—maybe.
PAOLO DUTTO
ABEL MENDOZA is a grape grower to the tips of his wine-stained fingers. His dented, mudencrusted Jeep is a familiar sight on the back roads of Rioja, northern Spain, traveling between his 40 different parcels of vineyard— some of them no larger than a tennis court—in the towns of Ábalos, Labastida and San Vicente. The man has a visceral attachment to the land. As a sign on the wall of his kitchen puts it: “When I die, bury me with my tractor.”