Blame it on Rioja

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.

Printed on lined paper in cursive type and bound into a little ledger book, the 200 plus-page list is as deep in offerings as it is pleasing to the eye. Verticals of Spanish, French, German, and Italian wine abound; the Rioja selection alone is 55 pages long, with vintages going back to the 1920s.

I settled on a 1976 López de Heredia Viña Tondonia Rioja Blanco Gran Reserva, in honor of the first person who told me about Rekondo, and ordered, as a first course (pictured above), a plate of perfectly sauteed cepas, a seasonal wild mushroom in the Boletus family, as well as a plate of blistered Basque green peppers. For a second course I ordered a simple roasted hake fillet, know in Spain as the fun-to-say-with-an-exaggerated-accent, merluza.

Unsurprisingly, the wine matched the food beautifully, the wine’s acidity–still searing after all these years–its earthy and almondy flavor profile, its seductiveness and understated elegance, harmonized with each bite we encountered.

And speaking of elegance, yes, I had company.

And yes, her name was Violeta.

And speaking of Violeta, I think it’s about time I reveal her true identity…

The lovely Ms. Amy Ehrenreich at Rekondo, San Sebastián, Spain, September 17, 2007. Photo: Adrian Murcia.

This entry was posted on Monday, December 24th, 2007 at 3:57 pm and is filed under Food pairings, General, Personal Travels, Rioja, Personal Travels, Spain, San Sebastián, Vintages, White Wine. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.