Together with Marqués de Riscal and Marqués de Murrieta, Marqués de Legarda is one-third of the trinity of the region's most storied winemakers. In the 1860s, they were the first in Spain to age their wine in oak barrels, as the French did. They used local tempranillo grapes, which had been in high demand by the French since an outbreak of phylloxera ravaged the Bordeaux vineyards. A few decades later, the three wineries were world renowned. But today, only one—Legarda's—is still owned by its founding family. Missing it means missing an essential part of Riojan history.

Upon entering the winery—through a stone archway topped by the family's coat of arms, a time-worn carving of a pitcher containing three lilies—the first thing you see is the imposing pedestal on which Legarda's great-grandfather displayed his wines at the Bordeaux Exposition in 1895. The winery, whose official name is Bodegas de la Real Divisa, won a bronze medal, making it the first Spanish one to be so honored. Upstairs, beyond a collection of trophies and plaques from a century's worth of wine competitions, lies the sala de catas (tasting room), where we stopped to enjoy our first aperitif: a gutsy yet easy-to-drink 1998 Reserva, served with artisanal queso manchego and jamón Ibérico that were so yummy I could have happily stayed and made them my whole dinner.

But our next stop was belowground, in a labyrinth of ancient stone staircases and narrow tunnels carved into rock. There we saw the rooms where Legarda's wine is aged in barrels of toasted French or American oak, learned how he is trying to combine the best techniques of the twenty-first century with the best techniques of the Middle Ages, and finished at his sanctum sanctorum—a gated cell holding collector's items, including bottles from Legarda's first excellent-rated vintage in 1920.

Ascending from the caves, we strolled at sunset through the quaint streets of the village of Abalos (population: 400) until we encountered the little old lady who holds the key to its Church of St. Stephen—a national landmark where Legarda's ancestors are buried, and which is normally open only for Sunday mass—and popped inside so he could show me the famous altarpiece. Then we headed to the palace for more hors d'oeuvres—melt-in-your-mouth foie gras served with a blood-warming 2000 Crianza—and a tour of its treasures. For dinner all I wanted was more of that foie gras. Instead, we sat down to menestra (a vegetable stew, here with ham and partridge eggs) paired with a 1994 Reserva, followed by pularda (young hen) with wild rice and raisins and a 1995 Gran Reserva, and finished with the "Legarda family pie" (layers of pastry filled with raspberries, apricots, sweet walnuts, and whipped cream) and a 2001 Reserva—all so delectable that I had no regrets about the uneaten foie gras.

As for the wines, I'm no oenophile, but I can tell you that they seemed a perfect reflection of the house surrounding them: big, rich, warm, full of character. They are important, traditional wines, as well—and in this they seemed a reflection of Legarda himself, who takes preserving his family's heritage very seriously. Although he's got enough modern-day street smarts to have lived in New York, London, and Moscow as an international banker, he is also a gentleman's gentleman who seems to have stepped out of some long-ago chivalrous past. Legarda is now focused on winemaking, and his simplest house wine proves that Spain is the place to look for that rare combination of value and quality. He produces 180,000 bottles per year and sees this as part of maintaining the family heritage, which, like the rest of European nobility's, is in danger of disappearing.