Blame it on Rioja

The UK’s Decanter Magazine, hands down the most lucid, comprehensive, and intellectually rigorous wine magazine in English, takes on Rioja Reservas from the complicated 2002 vintage in its most recent panel tasting (September 2007, pp. 77-80). Expectations were low; after picture-perfect ripening conditions in the now-heralded 2001 vintage, 2002 served the region of a cocktail of spring frosts and excessive summer rains that threatened flowering and hampered ideal ripening of the fruit. Nevertheless, the six-member tasting panel emerged “pleasantly surprised.”

As lead taster and Rioja expert John Radford puts it, with typically inventive prose, “There were no really great, head-bangingly, mind-bogglingly fantastic wines, like there would have been if this had been 2001, 2004, or 2005, but overall the quality and value for money are still there - as well as the harmony you look for in Rioja.”

To call itself a Reserva, a Rioja is required by law to age for at least three years at the bodega, including at least one year in Bourdeax-style, 225-liter oak barrels (the most palpable legacy of Rioja’s close historical connection with its northern neighbor).

“Reserva has always had the cachet of being the ‘gold standard’ in Rioja,” Radford writes, “Perhaps not the best wines, but the most reliable.”

“I love the iron fist in the velvet glove you get with really good reservas,” Ed Adams, another panelist, writes, in a phrase often used to describe Pomerol, “Acidity and tannin, but wrapped in soft, velvety fruit.”

The panel tasted 54 wines and, as is the case with all Decanter panels, rated the wines on a twenty-point scale that put them into one of five categories, one to five stars. Of those 54 wines, 28 merited *** (Recommended, 14.5-16.49 pts.), four got **** (Highly Recommended, 16.5-18.49 pts.), and two wines, Bodegas Baigorri and Marqués de Riscal, won ***** (Decanter Award, Outstanding).

How funny that the panel, which tastes wine “blind” (meaning that they are tasted without the panelists’ knowing what they are judging), should award its highest rating to two wines that not only represent two ends of the style spectrum (Baigorri, which the panel describes as “modern, clean, and attractive…well structured modern style”; and Riscal, with “soft, strawberry fruit with spice and cedar…acidity and tannin to last,” descriptors of the classic style), but also come from two of the highest profile, so-called architectural bodegas.

Nice to see two exemplars of the happy union of both style and substance.

Bodegas Baigorri

Marqués de Riscal

Based on the five hours we spent with Richie trolling for striped bass and bluefish about a mile southeast of Montauk Point (where underwater shoals called “rips” rise up to within thirty feet of the surface and generate swells that churn the gut like a theme-park pendulum ride someone forgot to turn off), I can’t really see myself grabing a beer with the guy anytime soon.

Impatient, unfriendly, and visibly annoyed by even the slightest deviation from his explicit orders, Richie isn’t exactly a people person. But would I go out on the water with him again? Hell yes. Why? Because the man knows how to catch you some fish.

After work one night earlier this month, I joined two colleagues from Chanterelle, line cooks Devon Gilroy and Charles Imbelli, on a three-hour drive out to Montauk, Long Island, for a half day of fishing early the following morning.

Our adventure did not begin auspiciously. Devon’s bike was stolen while he was shopping for provisions earlier in the evening. The A/C in Charles’ car was on the fritz. The gravel lot outside Salivar’s (an all-nite dockside diner), where we chose to park when we arrived at Montauk Harbor at 3:45 am, was arguably the worst place on the entire East End to try to grab a couple of hours of sleep.

So you can imagine how pleasant it was to board “Dawn,” a 35-foot charter boat helmed by Captain Bob Tuma, two sleepless hours later. Captain Bob is an avuncular and tack-sharp 85 year old with over 50 years’ experience doing this sort of thing. Richie is Captain Bob’s first mate. Richie didn’t say much until it was time to drop our first line, about 45 minutes later.

We fished with a wire line and used only two types of lures all day, a six-inch feathered jig designed to look like a twirling squid in the water, and a long, skinny, bright reddish-orange silicone lure with a single hook near the bottom, designed to mimic an eel.

The first kind of lure, the jig, required constant, measured lateral snaps of the fishing rod (jigging) in order to be effective, and I am not sure Richie was ever satisfied with our renditions of this move; but collectively, we pulled in about five or six blues this way.

The second lure required no jigging but did call for a quiet mind. Richie informed us that, when we feel a tug, we have to wait a second or two and then start reeling; pull right away and you’ll lose your fish. God forbid you lost a fish because you got too excited and pulled too soon. Richie had little patience for this. “What are you doing?! Stop reeling! He’s gone! You lost him! You got nothing! Ah, jeez…gimme that rod!”

That skinny silicone eel proved an aquatic goldmine for us. We landed our best catches of the day in this way: six stripers and three more blues. Two of the stripers topped 20 pounds. I didn’t keep count, but I’m pretty sure that I pulled in the highest number of keepers overall; Devon and Charles, lucky dogs, landed those 20 lb.-plus striped bass (I’m not bitter, though). In each case, Richie knew right away that something significant was on the other end of the line, that it was time to kick up the engines a bit more.

“Bob,” he’d shout up to our captain in a rich baritone, “big fish, Bob.”

CAPTAIN BOB TUMA 631.668.2357
http://www.montauksportfishing.com/DAWN.htm

Photos:
Top, from left: ADM, Charles Imbelli, Devon Gilroy. Center: Our nemesis and savior, Richie. Bottom: The day’s catch.

Photos courtesy Charles Imbelli

So, why am I hankering so hard for Marqués de Murrieta’s Capellanía Reserva 2002? I assure you it’s not just because Tamara Lover has tasted it and I haven’t. Most alluring is the fact that it’s also both rare and unusual.

I first came across a reference to Capellanía doing research for my upcoming trip in Wines of Rioja (Mitchell Beazley, 2004), in which author John Radford describes the wine as a “post-modern take on classic [white] Rioja…quite delicious.” I came across it again in a Giles Macdonogh article entitled “Rioja: Evolution” (Decanter, June 2004, pp. 63-68), in which Macdonogh reports that Capellanía’s 9 heactare (22 acre) plot “is due to be halved again, with prices set to double.” Then I looked for it on Wine Searcher and I couldn’t believe my eyes: According to my search, only one store in the U.S. carries it, Hart Davis Hart Wine Co. in Chicago, IL. So, of course I went onto the Hart Davis Hart site to see how much they on hand. Answer: one bottle at $15.

It’s also the only white wine produced by Marqués de Murrieta, Rioja’s oldest winery and still one its best producers. Luciano de Murrieta made his first vintage in 1852 after several years of studying winemaking in Bordeaux, the first Rioja producer to use oak barrels for aging. Today, the bodega is owned and operated by Vicente Dalmau Cebrián Sagarriga, whose father, Don Vicente, Conde de Creixell, bought the winery from the heirs of the original  Marqués in 1983.

The young count has been quietly revolutionizing one of Rioja’s most revered institutions in recent years, and doing so in typical Riojano fashion: updating and innovating while simultaneously preserving tradition. He has introduced an ultramodern wine, Dalmau Reserva (85% Tempranillo, 10% Cabernet Sauvignon, and 5% Graciano, with 23 months in French oak), sourced from the oldest vineyard at the venerable Ygay Estate, purchased by Luciano back in 1872. “A thoroughly modern vino del autor,” according to traditionalist champion Gerry Dawes (”Rioja on the Prowl” Wine News Magazine, October/November 2002), “But it preserves the best of Murrieta’s classic style.”

Long associated with ultra-traditional winemaking, Murrieta built its reputation largely on its flagship Castillo Ygay Gran Reserva Especial, which is still in production and has maintained its old world character under winemaker María Vargas, despite necessary updates at the bodega and a slight (two year) shortening of bottle aging before release.

What makes Capellania so unusual is the fact that it is not a work of preservation; rather, it’s a relatively new project that looks to the past for inspiration: long oak aging, slightly oxidative flavors, etc. “An astonishing vote of confidence in traditional-style Rioja,” John Radford writes, “when almost everyone else was moving away from it.”

Don’t try to stop me. Come tomorrow, that one bottle in Chicago gets a one way ticket to NYC. Send me a note; if you live in New York City I just might share it with you.

Tamara Lover’s recent two-part series on Rioja for Gothamist (Return of Rioja and Return of Rioja, Part Dos: The Reds) triggered a succession of disparate thoughts when I came across both articles a couple of days ago.

First off, Ms. Lover has an awesome name. Like Pecorino Tartufello, Tamara Lover is just plain fun to say out loud, especially if you extend the first vowel sound of her last name just slightly and affect a faux Euro-accent, as in “I have taken a lover.” And then there’s the vaguely anticipatory aural effect of combining “Tamara” (which sounds a whole lot like “tomorrow”) with “Lover,” as in (again with a faux Euro-accent) “Today, she is friend. Tamara? Lover.”

Second, Lover’s brief foray into Spanish colloquial usage (describing how the adjective “cojonudo” - a word that derives from the Spanish word for balls, cojones - denotes something that’s really really good) not only reveals her sensitivity to the fact that it’s impossible to separate the products of a place from the culture of the people who make them, but also brought back for me a rush of memories from my days in Madrid in the mid-1990s, when I learned sometimes vulgar, almost always hilarious ways to describe situations or emotions I had encountered my whole life but never knew how to articulate–that is, until I discovered how the Spanish had been doing it all along.

And finally, there was a tinge of envy when I read over Lover’s tasting notes for her recommended whites, specifically for a wine I’ve been jonesing for in recent weeks but have never tried: Marqués de Murrieta’s Capellanía Reserva 2002, a single-vineyard white wine made from 100% Viura and aged for 36 months in American oak.

Check back tomorrow, Sunday, August 12, 2007, for Rioja Lover, Part Two