🍷 CVNE

CVNE, the Compañía Vinícola del Norte de España (Northern Spanish Wine Company), is a wine company in Haro, in the Rioja appellation. According to the house, it was founded in 1879 by two brothers and is still controlled by direct descendants of the founding family; Wikidata gives the same year. The house says its cellar of 1890–1909 was designed by Gustave Eiffel, with a roof carried by steel trusses and no columns.

According to the house, it now comprises four wineries: CVNE, Imperial, Viña Real and Contino. Its brands include Cune, Monopole (from 1915, which the house calls Spain's oldest white wine brand), Imperial and Viña Real (both from 1920), and Viñedos del Contino, created in 1973.

According to the house, the two founding brothers were Eusebio and Raimundo Real de Asúa. It reports a Grand Prize at the Antwerp Universal Exhibition in 1894, and says Imperial took its name from a special bottling for the English market, the “Pinta Imperial”. The Eiffel cellar, built between 1890 and 1909 with steel trusses running from wall to wall, was restored in 2007.

The house describes Contino as created in 1973 with the Contino family and as the first single vineyard established in Rioja; it calls its El Carmen facility of 1940 the first to use epoxy-lined concrete and says that when El Pilar opened in 1989 CVNE became the first winery to use gravity in fermentation. The Viña Real winery was inaugurated by King Juan Carlos I in 2004.

Rioja is a protected designation of origin (PDO) and Spain's first DOCa. The label shows the ageing: a red Reserva is aged for at least 36 months, at least 12 of them in barrel and 6 in bottle, and a Gran Reserva for at least 60 months, at least 24 in barrel and 24 in bottle. The wine may be bottled only within the zone.

Why it matters to you. Reserva and Gran Reserva guarantee minimum ageing under the rules, while names such as “Imperial” or “Viña Real” are the house's own. The WHO reminds: there is no safe level of alcohol.