Blame it on Rioja

How ironic that the same week I should heap praise upon the Blanco de Remelluri, a five-grape white blend that includes Chardonnay and Sauvignon Blanc—and which has been allowed to call itself Rioja because its constituent grapes were planted before the grapes were officially outlawed—the OIPVR (Organización Interprofesional del Vino de Rioja), the region’s marketing and regulatory body, should approve the use of three new white grapes in Rioja beginning with the 2007 vintage: Chardonnay, Sauvignon Blanc, and Verdejo.

The news was reported in an article written by John Radford on January 16, and appeared on Decanter.com. Click here to read the article.

Somewhat taken aback at first, upon further reflection I think the approval of new white grape varietals in Rioja—yes, even Chardonnay—is not such a bad thing at all. The 49% ceiling precludes the outcome traditionalists fear the most: 100% Chardonnay Rioja butterballs indistinguishable from their counterparts in California or Australia.

No matter how you slice it, Viura, the dominant white grape of Rioja, has its limits. (more…)

Wine and cheese have long enjoyed a harmonious relationship. For centuries, they have figured prominently into the national diets of France, Spain, Italy, and Switzerland, evolving into a rich and varied mosaic of local traditions, each making the most of what was available close by. It makes sense that a cheese maker would want to make something that would taste good with the wine produced down the road, and vice versa; a phenomenon that led to the expression, “What grows together, goes together”: the main reason why Albariño goes so well with Tetilla.

Every so often, though, it’s fun to cross regional or national borders to find wine and cheese matches so tasty you’re liable to let out a grunt or sigh or whatever you do when you’ve tasted something totally up your gastro-alley.

A year and a half ago, I found such a match, and I recently tasted it again to see if it still stood up. It did. The pairing in question: Queso de la Garrotxa, a sweet and fragrant goat’s milk cheese from the foothills of the Catalan Pyrenees and an unusual white wine from Remelluri in the Rioja Alavesa. (more…)

To analyze a thing’s coolness is very often to render that thing instantly uncool. Coolness erodes under excessive scrutiny and disappears entirely when the object of cool begins to luxuriate in its own bad-assedness: call it the curse of self-consciousness.

Still, there’s a variety of cool impervious to erosion. To wit:

1. “Blue in Green,” on Miles Davis’ 1959 recording, Kind of Blue, particularly John Coltrane’s solo that floats in seemingly out of nowhere.
2. The heist scene in Jean-Pierre Melville’s 1970 film, Le Cercle Rouge.
3. The live version of “Just Like Tom Thumb’s Blues” on Bob Dylan’s Bootleg Series, Volume 4: Live 1966, captured in Manchester, England in May 1966, the fateful spring Dylan went electric. Dylan has never rocked harder; keyboardist Garth Hudson should be knighted for his performance on this song.

To this list, let us add Santiago Calatrava’s Ysios winery in the Rioja Alavesa, nestled at the base of the Sierra de Cantabria, a stone’s throw from the medieval walled city of Laguardia.

There is no winery in the world more exciting to approach from a distance than Ysios. Despite its bold design, Calatrava’s shimmering wave of metal and wood is perfectly harmonious with its surroundings. Its undulating aluminum roof echoes the craggy limestone massif above it and creates six distinct solid arcs of cedar in the main structure below it, arcs that look an awful lot like a row of giant oak barrels. In the center of the structure, a massive portico of glass and fir extends towards the south like the prow of a ship. The main reception hall lies within this prow, the focal point of a giant ship on a direct course for Laguardia: a consummately modern architect’s love letter to the past.

At Ysios in October, I learned from Javier Elizalde that Calatrava’s curvilinear roof, which rolls across a northwest to southeast axis, is also a tribute to the north wind. A supremely cool gesture that symbolizes coolness of another sort: the crucial role Atlantic winds (which actually comes in from the northwest but is always referred to locally as the “North wind”) play in shutting down Rioja vines at night, effectively preserving acidity in the grapes and ensuring a balanced final product—one of Rioja’s key climactic attributes and part of the reason why Tempranillo from Rioja is very rarely confused with Tempranillo grown anywhere else in the world and why Rioja is such an exemplary food wine.