Letter from Haro 8: No Risotto
View from Finca Valpiedra, September 11, 2007
Tuesday, September 11, 2007
3:30pm
On the road to Cenicero
Lachlan Cox at Finca Valpiedra was admirably accommodating with us today, a big relief as logistics become harder and harder to juggle. I saw an opportunity to have both groups, production and sommelier, coincide at Valpiedra at 12:30 p.m. today, which is all well and good except for that fact I had to ask Cox if we could cut into his time with the sommeliers so that we could pull them out one by one and interview them on Valpiedra’s front patio, with the Ebro River in the foreground and the Sierra de Cantabria in the background.
Speaking of the Sierra, I was pleased to see the mountain range cooperate, giving us the image I most wanted at Valpiedra, that of maritime rain clouds from the Bay of Biscay suspended over the limestone peaks of Rioja’s most dramatic uplift. The clouds were not as dense this time (see photo, top) as they were the last time I was at Valpiedra, in May of 2006 (bottom), but I’ll take it. I can’t explain this phenomenon meteorologically, but the way it illustrates how Rioja’s special topography influences its climate is kinda hard to match.
View from Finca Valpiedra, May 29, 2006
John Barkley took charge of the sommelier interviews as Kelly Bucher and I worked out logistics with Rebeca Gómez (in person) and Ricardo Aguiriano (on the phone).
We were able only to interview Theresa and Juan, and while I was not present for most of both interviews, I have a lot of faith in John.
Our visit to the Dinastía Vivanco complex immediately after Valpiedra was both frustrating and triumphant: frustrating because, wouldn’t you know it, we were pressed for time and did not have room in our schedule for our planned sit-down meal in the Museum’s restaurant, where I had enjoyed a killer risotto with wild mushrooms and smoked Idiazábal cheese last fall, and had to make do with bocadillos of tortilla española to go.
Triumphant because Rafael Vivanco, the fourth-generation co-executive of Dinastía Vivanco, was charming, eloquent, and great on camera. The Vivanco story–how Rafael’s family went from selling prepared foods door-to-door (”My great-grandmother was a very good salesperson,” he told me) to overseeing one of the country’s most palatial wine estates and what many regard to be the finest wine museum in the world–not only makes for compelling narrative, it’s also in many ways a stand-in for the story of the region itself.
Chris Fleming and Jon Stamell’s suggestion to place a good amount of emphasis on what María José López de Heredia calls the “great patrimony of Rioja”–the generational continuty here–is definitely paying off.
Another plus is that the garden of grape varietals just outside the museum’s front entrance allowed Chad to capture a series of essential images in one fell swoop.
Sr. Vivanco also told me that late this year or early next year the museum will be publishing a book based on “Brindis por el cine” (A Toast to Film), part of the permanent collection that pays homage to images of wine in cinema from all over the world (see my post, “The Marriage of Wine and Cinema”). I suggested to Jon after the interview that we might want to explore the possibility of sometime next year releasing the book in the U.S., perhaps seeing if there is a way to collaborate with the Cervantes Institute/Film Society at Lincoln Center’s annual “Spanish Cinema Now” series at the Walter Reade theater uptown. Happy to report that both Jon and Rafael seemed interested.
Photos credits: José Guerra