Letter from Haro 2: CIA Rioja 2007, some background
September 14, 2007
A little bit more about the project we call CIA Rioja 2007: Jon Stamell, who heads the Vibrant Rioja campaign, has long held that a close association with the Culinary Institute of America would be a good thing, as it would offer us great exposure to influential industry types, keep us plugged into the annual Worlds of Flavor conference in Napa, and would tie our own upward growth to the CIA’s rapidly expanding international programming and new media initiatives.
Part of the plan was to develop a DVD video on Rioja, an educational documentary that would be mailed to thousands of alumni and would also permanently reside on the CIA’s prochef.com website, as part of the ProChef Discover series. At the same time, we would recruit five emerging sommeliers from around the country to join us on the trip, and try to see the story of the region unfold through their eyes, try to capture that discovery on film.
That meant simultaneously creating the story—which is to say, create the setting and narrative organization of a story that would ultimately tell itself—and choosing the sommeliers, both duties I enthusiastically took on.
Working closely with freelancer Chris Fleming, a passionate and knowledgeable Riojaphile and the DVD’s technical adviser, I developed the story’s themes and cast of characters, submitted a schedule request for the week of shooting, and began compiling questions I would ask each winemaker or chef. At the same time, I began the recruitment process for the sommeliers, which meant essentially checking in with Master Sommeliers Fred Dame, Larry Stone, and Roger Dagorn, and putting together a list of candidates, each of whom I would call in order to verify availability and try to get a sense of his or her personality.
Early in the summer, Jon asked Kelly Bucher, who works for CRT/tanaka (the agency that administers the campaign) to work with me on these projects, and once the sommelier selections were made, she basically took over the logistics and liaison duties as they related to the sommeliers while I concentrated on the DVD script.
Kelly and I arrived a few days before shooting in order to check in with the Consejo Regulador of D.O.Ca. Rioja (our client) and visit as many bodegas as possible in order to let them know what to expect.
What I did not account for was that Haro would be deep in fiestas on the day we planned to shoot here, and that the shooting schedule I had created would lie somewhere between overly ambitious and utterly insane.
Stay tuned for more……
September 21st, 2007 at 10:52 am
[…] Adrian Murcia, a passionate Riojan food and wine blogger based in NY, has taken a short hop over the Atlantic to Rioja, where he’s been posting an interesting series of articles worth reading called, “Letters from Haro“, on a new Vibrant Rioja campaign. The campaign aims to create an educational documentary film on the region by the James Beard Award-winning producer/director John Barkley. The backdrop to this story is that Vibrant Rioja, a partnership between DOC Rioja and Wines from Spain, pays Adrian to blog about Riojan food and wine with the caveat that he has full editorial autonomy. Now on one hand, I think it’s fantastic that Spanish wine organizations are getting on the Web 2.0 bandwagon, commissioning bloggers to promote their wines. On the other hand, why would you commission a blogger, but then take 20 steps back saying, “…opinions expressed herein are entirely the author’s own, and do not necessarily reflect the views of Vibrant Rioja, Wines from Spain, ICEX, or the Regulating Council of DOCa Rioja”? View Larger Map […]