2024 Faustino VII Tempranillo Kosher Spain 750 ml

You don't often come across a kosher wine with a résumé like this.

Bodegas Faustino is the house behind the world's best-selling Rioja Gran Reserva—the gold-mesh-wrapped bottle with a 17th-century Rembrandt portrait gazing out from the label. Founded in 1861 and still run by the founding family, today the fourth generation of sisters Carmen and Lourdes Martínez Zabala, Faustino was named 2025 European Winery of the Year by Wine Enthusiast, and its wines reach more than 140 countries.

For this bottle, that same family set out to make something different: a fully kosher Tempranillo, certified Kosher for Passover by Badatz Agudas Yisroel. It carries the same Rembrandt portrait as its famous older siblings, but it's very much its own wine. It's also non-mevushal, meaning it hasn't been flash-heated, a deliberate choice to keep the fruit's aromatics, texture, and freshness fully intact.

The grapes don't come from Rioja but from just over its western border, in the Tierra Estella corner of Navarra. In the villages of Los Arcos and Torres del Río, along the old Camino de Santiago pilgrimage route, the El Sequerón vineyard sits at 1,300 to 1,500 feet. Its deep, clay-rich soils over marl and sandstone hold moisture through the dry summers and feed a slow, even ripening.

This is 100% Tempranillo, picked by hand and fermented in koshered stainless steel tanks under close rabbinical supervision, from harvest all the way to bottling. There's no oak in the picture, just a spontaneous malolactic fermentation and a gentle vegan fining, the goal being to let the grape speak plainly. What lands in the glass is a red that finishes bone dry, with plenty of freshness to spare.

We've long admired how seriously this family takes its land. Faustino was the first winery in Rioja to earn the Sustainable Wineries for Climate Protection certification, part of a wider push toward greener farming across all of its estates.

Put it together and you have something you don't see every day: a bright, fruit-driven, food-loving Tempranillo that carries both a serious kosher pedigree and one of the most storied names in Spanish wine.