Blame it on Rioja

A reader named Abel Iturriaga recently wrote in about a very pleasant experience he had visiting Bodegas Santiago Ijalba in Gimileo, a village in Rioja Alta situated about half-way between Haro and Briones on the old Logroño highway.

Ijalba tends towards the modern style, making two types of blancos, Ermita San Felices (stainless steel fermented in the Marques de Cáceres style) and Abando Blanco, late-harvest Viura fermented in American oak barricas (most barrel fermented whites use French oak) and kept on its lees for five months. Although the Abando Blanco is clearly produced in the modern way, my notes from a 2006 T. Edward tasting say that it still “retains the best traits of the traditional style–nutty and complex.” I quite liked the Ogga 2000 Reserva, a 100% Tempranillo-based wine made from 60 year old vines and aged for 17 months in French oak and 3 months in American oak. I found the wine to have “good acidity, a dose of pepper, and a lengthy finish. Nice balance of modern and traditional aromas.”

Oddly enough, the Ogga 2001 Reserva, which I ordered in January of this year at Casa Mono with my friend Colum Sheehan, the GM at Babbo, disappointed me, as it lacked the balance I really liked in the 2000; I found it a little too extracted and somewhat over the top. A quick glance at the bodega’s website today, and I discovered that the winemaker has done away with the 3 months of American oak aging for the Ogga Reserva, opting instead for a full 20 months in French oak, which I suspect is all or mostly new oak. I also learned that the 2001 underwent three days of pre-fermentation maceration, although I don’t recall if the same was done for the 2000. In my view, the 2001 still needs time to mellow. Not surprisingly, Jay Miller of the Wine Advocate quite liked the 2001 Reserva, giving it 91 points in his most recent review of Spanish wine.

And here we enter again into a debate playing out all over the world: does the movement away from established methods of vinification, even if we’re talking about a mere 3 months in a different oak type, make a wine any less regionally specific?

I think more important, and I suspect most of my sommelier colleagues would agree, is how does the food compatibility of a new version of the same wine compare with that of its predecessor? In this case, I have to say that I think the 2000 might be a better choice to enjoy with a meal, even as I fully understand the rationale behind the winemaker’s decision in this case to tweak his wine in a different direction.

Ogga 2001 Reserva is imported by T. Edward Wines.

Taberna Almendro 13, Madrid, Spain, September 20, 2007. Photo: Adrian Murcia

One of my favorite spots anywhere in Spain is Taberna Almendro 13, not far from El Mercado de la Cebada in the neighborhood of La Latina in Old Madrid. My first visit was in 1993, when I was studying Spanish at the Unversidad Complutense de Madrid. It was a carefree time for me: the dollar strong, my obligations few, my bank account fat from years working at Washington, D.C.’s Restaurant Nora during college, living rent free with my parents, God bless ‘em.

Almendro 13 is where I developed a taste for both Manzanilla and Queso de la Serena, two products I would later explore at their respective source: Sanlúcar de Barrameda, near Cádiz, during a sommelier trip to Sherry country in 2005; and Castuera, a town nestled in the rolling hills of La Serena in eastern Extremadura, during a whirlwind study of Jamón Ibérico de Bellota in 2001 funded by a travel grant from the Geoffrey Roberts Trust.

But back in 1993, these two historic Spanish gastronomic wonders, and so many more, were mysteries unveiled daily, forming a constant parade of little gifts in unconventional packaging. Spain’s capital city, bathed in that special pink and blue twilight captured in the photograph above, presided over and abetted my personal transformation, as I settled into the novel sensation of being entirely at home in my own skin, perhaps because this was the first time in my life I felt like there was no other place in the world I would rather be.

Alemendro 13 has in many ways become the symbol of that transformation for me, a place that I never fail to visit every time I’m in Madrid, no matter how brief my stay or busy my agenda, a subconscious but effectively mandatory pilgrimage that’s both a private tribute to bygone innocence and a grateful acknowledgment of its having first lit the path I continue to walk to this day.

The wine list at Rekondo, San Sebastián, September 17, 2007. Photo: Adrian Murcia.

Last week, a colleague of mine at Chanterelle, Gayle Dewindt–a biking Brooklynite most likely on a first-name basis with every purveyor of fine consumables in all five boroughs–brought into work a few slices of smoked duck breast from the Blue Ribbon Bakery Market, and shared it with the rest of the staff in between our first and second seating. It was so good, so perfectly seasoned, so satisfyingly smoky in a way that recalled both being inside Louie Mueller’s Barbecue in Taylor, Texas and smelling the first firewood smoke of the season in the autumns of my youth, that I did a little jig, a smoked duck gig.

Well that’s sort of how I felt this past September in San Sebastián when a very nice lady at Rekondo handed me the restaurant’s wine list. I had heard about this place from R. López de Heredia Viña Tondonia managing director María José López de Heredia, who told me last year that the restaurant carried vintages of her family’s wines that she herself did not have in her own bodega. I had also read about it in an article by Jancis Robinson and in another article written by Gerry Dawes, but nothing had prepared me for the moment when I would actually be holding the restaurant’s wine list in my hands.

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To the short list of 2007’s best writing on Spanish gastronomy, add Mike Steinberger’s San Sebastián on Six Meals a Day: The Making of a Culinary Mecca, an article that recently appeared on Slate.com. Mr. Steinberger devotes significantly more column inches to Donostia’s Michelin-starred alta cocina than to the equally relevant downtown pintxos scene, but he does a great job of placing the present gastronomic moment in San Sebastián, and indeed in all of modern Spain, into its proper geographic and historical context; in other words, he’s as interested in understanding how the city came to its role as “the epicenter of Spain’s culinary revolution” as he is in describing in minute detail the stuff that he ate there (and we didn’t).

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Among my colleagues on the restaurant side of the wine trade, it’s become fairly axiomatic that writer Matt Kramer is the best (some say only) reason to read Wine Spectator Magazine. If you aspire to an advanced understanding of the aesthetics of wine connoisseurship, look no further than Mr. Kramer’s Making Sense of Wine, a fine example of essential reading that’s also a pleasure to read.

In this month’s Wine Spectator, devoted to the editors’ 100 most exciting wines of 2007 (Rioja shout-outs: #11,Torre Muga 2004; and #16 LAN Edición Limitada 2004), Kramer writes about his “reverie wines” of 2007 (subscription required). In typically passionate, readable prose, he explains just what he means by reverie:

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Dutch Angle/Spanish Wine: (From left) ADM, photographer Nigel Barker, and Rebeca Gomez of Rioja’s Consejo Regulador, New York City, Wednesday, December 5, 2007. Photo: Kendyl Wright.

While admittedly not an avid television watcher, I’d be lying if I said it wasn’t pretty damn cool to lead a Rioja tasting a few weeks ago at the studios of photographer Nigel Barker, a judge on the CW Network’s America’s Next Top Model.

Mr. Barker is a professed fan of Rioja and of pretty much all things Spanish, having lived in Spain for many years with his family, and he struck up a friendship with Vibrant Rioja’s Kendyl Wright during September’s Fashion Week, for which Rioja was the official wine. In the event, Kendyl arranged for a tasting at the photographer’s studio in the Meatpacking District in early December and asked me to lead it.

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It’s rare to find a piece of entertainment quite like Matt Gould and Dina Millan’s brilliant and utterly original “USC ‘Unofficial’ Holiday Video”. Full of knowing little nuggets bound to be satisfying holiday confections for NYC restaurant insiders like me, the video, produced entirely by employees of one of New York City’s Downtown perennials, nevertheless has so much universal appeal that I wouldn’t be surprised if it took the country by storm in the next couple of weeks. A must see.