Tom Puyaubert

The Path

The practical side of wine came first in 2000, when Tom Puyaubert took a training position for a French cooperage subsidiary in Spain in La Rioja, Spain. That entry point mattered: cooperage sits close to the material conditions that shape wine before it reaches the cellar, and it gave him direct contact with the detail, patience, and consistency the trade demands. Rioja became more than a place of employment. Puyaubert arrived for cooperage work, but the region itself became the point of the work. By 2003, that decision had hardened into a project, and he founded Bodegas Exopto. The role combined ownership and production from the outset, with the same exacting approach that had defined his early training. Since 2003, Bodegas Exopto has remained the fixed frame for Puyaubert’s work in Laguardia. The project reads as something built methodically, with a clear point of view and the discipline needed to keep that point of view intact over time.

The Work Today

In 2003, Puyaubert founded Bodegas Exopto and became its winemaker. Those functions have stayed joined. Based in Laguardia, he continues to shape the project from the ground up, bringing the accountability of an owner and the scrutiny of a maker to each decision. The work reflects both origin and intent: Rioja interpreted through a perspective formed early and carried forward.

Signature

Tom's signature wines include El Espinal Maturana Tinta and Horizonte Blanco 2018. They show the breadth of Puyaubert’s range and the measured precision behind the name he has built in Rioja, where identity and technical control have remained part of the same practice.

In Their Words “I thought it was very challenging at the beginning of 2000 to make a different Rioja, in terms in winemaking and blends, and break with the traditional reserva and crianza.”

Acclaim

His own account of the work frame is the clearest marker: “I thought it was very challenging at the beginning of 2000 to make a different Rioja, in terms in winemaking and blends, and break with the traditional reserva and crianza.”