El Coto is a Rioja producer whose range is simply outstanding (disclosure: supplier to one of my clients at home). I was lucky enough to have a personalised tour and tasting – after a long day’s cycling, it was most welcome.

Their facility is enormous, catering for over 800 hectares of grapes from their own land. This picture shows just one of their facilities boasting 50 stainless steel tanks each of which has a capacity of 50,000 litres (as well as additional 100,000 litre tanks for good measure). (That’s somewhere between 2.5 to 3 million litres!). Compared to the tiny holdings in Burgundy which we saw on our recent cycling trip – some perhaps only a handful of hectares – it is astonishing that El Coto produces such a high volume of consistently excellent wine.