Most English-language write-ups on Bodegas Ochoa read like a wine-shop label: family winery in Olite, Navarra, founded in 1845, now run by two sisters, known for a Moscatel. That is accurate and also thin. It skips the actual reason the winery innovates the way it does: Javier Ochoa, the man who built the modern estate, spent more than a decade running EVENA, the Navarra regional government’s own viticulture and enology research institute, before he ever devoted himself full time to his family’s vines.
That detail matters because it explains everything that followed. A winery run by someone who had already spent years testing clones, studying soils and chasing grape recoveries on the government’s payroll is a different kind of operation than one that simply inherited a family recipe. It is the difference between a winery that ages what its grandfather planted and one that ran Spain’s first formal winery-led research project. Readers who only get the family-tree version miss why Ochoa’s Moscatel de Grano Menudo recovery became a template other Navarra producers still cite.
This account draws on the winery’s own published history, the municipal record kept by the Ayuntamiento de Olite, the Gran Enciclopedia de Navarra’s entry on EVENA, and independent wine-trade profiles, cross-checked against each other rather than repeated from a single source.
A Government Wine Lab, Not Just a Family Cellar
Bodegas Ochoa was founded in 1845, when the Ochoa surname first attached itself to vineyard work in Olite, a small town in Navarra’s Ribera. Adriano Ochoa, working in the first half of the twentieth century, planted around 80 hectares in La Plana de Olite and produced the family’s first oak-aged, bottled red wines, a real shift from selling grapes or bulk wine. When Adriano died in 1965, his son Javier Ochoa took over the winery at just 20 years old and went on to train in oenology in Requena and in Bordeaux.
What happened next is the part most coverage leaves out. In the early 1980s, the Government of Navarra hired Javier Ochoa to work at EVENA, the Estación de Viticultura y Enología de Navarra, the regional government’s own research institute for grape growing and winemaking, headquartered in Olite itself. He led its enology work and went on to direct the institute until 1992, according to both the Ayuntamiento de Olite’s own municipal record and the Gran Enciclopedia de Navarra. Only after that decade in state research did he leave to run Bodegas Ochoa full time. The vineyard plantings at the winery’s Traibuenas estates, which today make up most of its land, began the same year he departed EVENA.
That sequence, government lab first, family winery second, is why Ochoa’s signature project reads less like a marketing story and more like applied research. In 1994 the winery ran what is widely credited as Spain’s first formal winery-led R&D project: the recovery of Moscatel de Grano Menudo, a nearly abandoned grape variety, developed into what became the winery’s best-known wine. Ochoa now holds roughly a fifth of all Navarra vineyard land planted to that grape.
Finca Montijo: The Oldest Vines, in the Town Where Kings Once Drank
Bodegas Ochoa‘s vineyards spread mostly south of Olite in Traibuenas, along the Ribera Alta near where the Cidacos and Aragón rivers meet, but its oldest plot sits right at the edge of Olite itself: Finca Montijo, the estate that surrounds the winery and supplies the fruit for Corazón de Finca Montijo, a tribute wine named for Javier Ochoa. The soil there carries more clay and iron than the Traibuenas plots, and it holds low-yield Bordeaux clones the family brought back and adapted over decades.
The family’s own history ties that same ground to something older than the winery’s 1845 founding date. According to the Ochoa family’s account, reported independently by the wine-trade publication International Wine Review, a document from 1370 shows Queen Juana, wife of King Carlos II of Navarra, ordering wine from one Ochoa de Ayanz, recorded as mayor of Olite at the time. That claim traces back to the family’s own history rather than an archive this article could independently verify, so it is worth treating as family record, not confirmed archival fact. What is independently documented is the broader context that makes the claim plausible: Olite was already a working royal seat under Carlos II, and his son and successor, Carlos III el Noble, ordered the town’s older castle expanded into the grand Palacio Real de Olite beginning in 1402, a project confirmed by the Universidad de Navarra’s Cátedra de Patrimonio y Arte Navarro and reported by the Spanish press. On 18 April 1407, Olite was made the seat of its own merindad, one of five administrative districts into which the kingdom was divided, formal proof of how much weight the town carried during exactly the period the Ochoa family’s own account describes.
None of that makes the winery’s vines grow in the palace’s literal shadow. Finca Montijo sits on the edge of the town, not against the palace walls. What it does mean is that a producer still bottling wine in Olite today occupies the same small town whose royal court, on the family’s own account, its ancestors once supplied, a detail that the standard “founded in 1845” version of the story never reaches.
The Vines, the Grapes and the Three Ranges
Since 2000, Bodegas Ochoa has relied entirely on its own estate-grown fruit, currently around 143 to 145 hectares depending on the year measured, farmed organically since a conversion that began in 2015. Tempranillo dominates the reds, alongside Garnacha, Graciano, Merlot and Cabernet Sauvignon; the whites lean on Viura, Chardonnay, Viognier and, above all, Moscatel de Grano Menudo. Part of the Garnacha vineyard has been regrafted with roughly 200 recovered clonal biotypes developed with the Universidad Pública de Navarra, a continuation of the same research instinct Javier Ochoa brought from EVENA.
In 2025, coinciding with the winery’s 180th anniversary, the family relaunched its labels and identity around three ranges. “Ahora” covers everyday, approachable wines for immediate drinking. “Aquí” gathers single-vineyard, terroir-driven bottlings developed by Adriana Ochoa, the winery’s current winemaker and technical director. “Siempre” holds the long-aged reds that built the winery’s reputation, including Corazón de Finca Montijo and Alma de Finca Secadero, a tribute to Mariví Alemán, Javier Ochoa’s wife, who ran the winery’s export strategy for decades. Since 2015, when Javier Ochoa and Mariví Alemán retired, their daughters Adriana and Beatriz, the winery’s sixth generation, have run the operation, with Beatriz as CEO handling sales and management.
The winery sits within DO Navarra, and roughly half its production, mostly reds, is exported, while whites, rosés and sweet wines sell more domestically. Grapes are harvested mechanically at night in the warmer plots to protect their aromatics, a detail that again traces back to the technical, research-first habits the winery inherited from its founder’s years at EVENA.
What Visitors Can Expect
Bodegas Ochoa is at Calle Miranda de Arga 35, in Olite, known bilingually in the town’s own municipal branding as Olite/Erriberri. The winery runs guided tours of the estate followed by tastings that pair its wines with its own olive oil, honey, and local cheese and chocolate, and it opens a summer wine bar with an outdoor terrace and occasional live-music sessions. Business hours listed by the Ayuntamiento de Olite run Monday to Friday, 8:00 to 18:00 from September through June and 8:00 to 15:00 in July and August, though visitors should confirm current tour times directly with the winery before planning a trip, since a municipal listing is not the same as a live booking calendar.
Visitors combining a wine tour with Navarra‘s broader history have plenty to work with nearby: the Kingdom of Navarra’s own long, complicated timeline explains how a seat like Olite could rival Pamplona for royal attention in the first place, and the story of how Pamplona itself became Navarra’s capital is the natural counterpoint to Olite’s own period as a royal residence. For a wider view of what the region grows in glass form, the overview of the Navarra wine region places Ochoa’s Moscatel and Tempranillo work in the context of its neighboring bodegas.
FAQ
Where is Bodegas Ochoa located?
Bodegas Ochoa is in Olite, Navarra, at Calle Miranda de Arga 35, about 40 kilometers south of Pamplona in the Ribera Alta wine zone. The town’s traditional bilingual name is Olite/Erriberri, using both its Spanish and Basque forms.
Is Bodegas Ochoa a family-owned winery?
Yes. Bodegas Ochoa has been a family operation since its 1845 founding and is now in its sixth generation. Sisters Adriana Ochoa, the winemaker and technical director, and Beatriz Ochoa, the CEO, took full control in 2015 when their parents, Javier Ochoa and Mariví Alemán, retired. That continuity sets it apart from Bodegas Chivite, a fellow Navarra producer whose ownership quietly passed out of the founding family’s hands in 2017.
What is EVENA and why does it matter to Bodegas Ochoa?
EVENA, the Estación de Viticultura y Enología de Navarra, is the Navarra regional government’s own wine research institute, based in Olite. Javier Ochoa, who built the modern Bodegas Ochoa, led its enology work and later directed the institute from around 1981 to 1992, before leaving to run his family’s winery full time.
What grape is Bodegas Ochoa known for?
Bodegas Ochoa is best known for its Moscatel de Grano Menudo, a historic grape variety the winery led the recovery of in a 1994 project widely credited as Spain’s first formal winery-run wine R&D program. Ochoa now farms roughly 20 percent of all Navarra vineyard land planted to this grape.
Every article on the Encierro blog is authored or reviewed by active bull runners with direct experience in Pamplona.