Blame it on Rioja

Above Navaridas, Spain, September 13, 2007. Photo: John Barkley.

As we were planning our DVD on Rioja, it was important to me that we find a way to capture visually the remarkable topography of the region. My dream was somehow to enter the Ebro valley more or less the way I did when I first came to Rioja in 1998, from the south, down from the Tierra de Cameros. But I wanted to do it from the air, to get a sense of how the region is just completely surrounded by mountains, with a meandering river squiggling its way across the center of the valley.

We soon learned that a helicopter was just too expensive and an airplane was impractical. So the Consejo Regulador’s Ricardo Aguiriano and Rebeca Gómez, good sports both of them, arranged for a hot air balloon (globo in Spanish) to get us up and over the valley, so we could get our shots. John Barkley and I went up the first day; Chad and I on the second. (For the record, I was perfectly willing to pass on going up one or both times, but it was decided that I was needed up there to point out what to shoot and to communicate with our pilot, Laureano Casado).

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Almudena Imhof at Bodegas Faustino, Oyón, Spain, May 31, 2006. Photo: José Guerra.

In the margins of a notebook I brought with me to Spain in May 2006, next to my tasting notes for the Faustino I 1996 Gran Reserva (“Firm tannic grip, terrific acidity, expressive fruit; not the most complex of the Gran Reservas I’ve tasted so far but utterly quaffable”), I recently discovered the words, “Open-toed olive shoes, olive suit, camo blouse, green eyes, elegant hands, articulate—lovely.”

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Yesterday, my brother Pablo and I decided to grab a bite and catch a movie. He met me at my place in the East Village and we walked down to Kampuchea, a modern and cozy Cambodia-inspired noodle and pork joint on Allen Street just a few blocks south of my apartment. Although we contemplated ordering at least one fish dish, we chose instead to do what we both wanted to do anyway, which was to carnivore (I know that carnivore is not a verb but it should be).

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In the vineyards with Marcos Eguren, September 13, 2007. Photo: Jon Stamell.

ADM: Where are we now?

ME: Right now we are in Viñedos de Páganos. Our group has three bodegas in Rioja, Sierra Cantabria, Señorío de San Vicente and Viñedos de Paganos; one bodega in Toro, Numathia Termes; and one bodega that makes vino de la mesa (table wine), the one right behind us, Dominio de Eguren.

ADM: And what does this vineyard, this part of Rioja, have that makes it special?

ME: At Viñedos de Paganos, where we are right now, we make two wines, one of which is El Puntido from this parcel [gesturing over his right shoulder]. This parcel is 25 hectares and is a vineyard planted 75 years ago. In 2001 we decided to make one wine specifically from this vineyard, a site we had been eying for many years.

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Marcos Eguren at Viñedos de Páganos in Rioja Alavesa, in front of the vineyard used to make El Puntido. Photo: Jon Stamell.

As I mentioned in my last post, Marcos Eguren is member of a family of vine growers now in its fifth generation. The Egurens have been marketing wines under their own label since 1958, when brothers Guillermo and Victorino Eguren launched Sierra Cantabria with bother-in-law Martín Cendoya, a viticulturalist.

Today, Marcos Eguren, Guillermo’s son, heads both vineyard management and winemaking, having expanded the brand not only in Rioja, with Sierra Cantabria spin-offs Señorío de San Vicente and Viñedos de Páganos, but also in other parts of Spain, most notably in Toro, where Numathia Termes has raised more than a few eyebrows among the foreign wine press.

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We are about to kick into postproduction high gear for the Rioja-CIA DVD video our production crew shot in September.

The Spanish transcriptions and English translations for all of the interviews I conducted in Spanish landed in my inbox on Wednesday, and it was good sign to hear from John Barkley in a conference call last Tuesday that the couple who carried out the work were so impressed by what they saw and heard that they are planning a trip to Rioja for their next vacation.

For the next few days, I’ll be going through the transcriptions, fifteen in all, to tighten up the translations for subtitling and highlight those passages we are likely use for the DVD.

I am also beginning to edit some of the twenty-some hours of audio that Chris Fleming collected on his visit to Rioja last spring and has graciously allowed me to post in BIOR as podcasts in the weeks to come.

And finally I now have access to hundreds of still images from the trip: mine, Jose Guerra’s, John Barkely’s and Jon Stamell’s.

In short, I’ve got a little treasure trove of Rioja geek-out material on my hands, gems of which will surely find their way onto BIOR in the weeks to come. We’ll begin tomorrow with an excerpt from our interview with Marcos Eguren of the now-ubiquitous-in-Spain Sierra Cantabria wine group and member of a family of vine growers now in its fifth generation.

Stay tuned.

Fiesta de la Vendimia de Rioja Alavesa (Rioja Alavesa Harvest Festival), Lapuebla de Labarca, Spain, September 17, 2007. Photo: John Barkley