Blame it on Rioja

SINGLE OLIVE TREE, SINGLE VINEYARD: Jesus Madrazo’s Viña del Olivo at CVNE’s Viñedos de Contino, Laserna, Spain, September 13, 2007. Photo: José Guerra.

Late last week, an email newsletter from the East Village Spanish wine shop Tinto Fino alerted me to an article that recently appeared in The Wall Street Journal monthly, SmartMoney: “Is Spain the New Bordeaux?”.

James B. Stewart’s “SmartSpending” piece chronicles an informal blind tasting he recently organized in which wines from two top Bordeaux properties, Cheateau Pape Clement 2004 ($80) and Chateau Mouton Rothschild 2004 ($275), were tasted alongside a broad range of ten Spanish wines selected by Tinto Fino’s Mani Dawes, the idea being to test Spanish mettle against a category of French wine that’s quickly becoming a stand-in for both inflated pricing and a weak dollar.

“The results confounded our expectations,” Stewart writes. “Of the many tastings we’ve done, this was perhaps the most humbling — and enjoyable.” Once the panel determined their top four wines, the labels were revealed. Viñedos de Contino’s powerhouse Viña del Olivo Rioja 2001 was the overwhelming favorite: “We couldn’t get enough of this. We found its nose elegant and its taste rich, full, a bit tannic; it boasted a long, velvety finish. It won two votes as a Bordeaux, but others found it a little too extroverted to qualify. Though steep in price [$125 for a 750ml bottle], it’s still a bargain by first-growth-Bordeaux standards.”

Next came El Bugader Montsant 2004($63), followed by Valbuena Ribera del Duero 2001 ($125). Pape Clement, the panel’s number four pick, was the sole Bordeaux to place.

Admittedly, young wines from a problematic vintage* do not a great property define. One must also consider the fact that the instant Mr. Stewart decided to ask Ms. Dawes to select the Spanish entrants, France was at an immediate disadvantage; few in the business know Spanish wines like she does, and her palate judgments, if the wine selection at Tinto Fino is any indication, are impeccable.

Still, I suspect that this is not the last time we hear about the wine cognescenti looking south towards Spain for wines that offer stunning quality without the ‘dollar hangover.’

As Spanish winemakers keep ratcheting up quality and wine consumers continue to educate themselves about killer wines made south of the Pyrenees that won’t break the bank, new and established brands in Rioja and beyond will start looking sweeter and sweeter to serious wine collectors and consumers alike.

We very well could be at the beginning of a paradigm shift. In many ways Spain has already trumped France in the world of gastronomy. Could the world of wine be far behind?

*NOTE: After the exuberant New World drink-me-now ripeness that attended the hot vintage of 2003, 2004 in Bordeaux returned to what many have called a more classic style, which is to say, one that needs years in the bottle to develop. See Jancis Robinson’s lucid comments on the matter.

CLASSIC COMBINATION: Chuletillas de cordero asadas (Grilled baby lamb chops), piquillo peppers, and fries, taken at Posada Mayor de Migueloa, Laguardia, Spain, September 9, 2007.  Photo: Jon Stamell.

It’s that time of year when one of viticulture’s most bracing demands comes a-callin’: the winter pruning of the vines.  By clipping the canes of each plant after the vines have shut down for the winter, a wine grower can reduce the quantity of fruiting buds and, therefore, improve the quality of the buds that eventually flower and bear fruit later in the season.

In Western Europe, the practice of grilling meat over the smoldering embers of vine clippings dates back several thousand years. In Rioja, the ancient practice of cooking meat over sarmientos in fact came to define the regional cuisine, and today traditional asadores, restaurants specializing in grilled meat, are still everywhere, thriving even as edgier cooking has made its way into the valley.

At the same time, Rioja’s cuisine helped to shape the evolution of its wine.  John Radford points out in Wines of Rioja that, even if it were possible, it’s unlikely that a red wine like Rioja would have fared very well along the seafood-rich estuaries of coastal Galicia. In other words, razor clams and sea scallops called out for high-acid, aromatic whites (i.e., Rias  Baixas, Ribeiro, Valdeorras); in Rioja, grilled baby lamb chops, or chuletillas de cordero, called out for something quite different.

And speaking of lamb chops, a reader named Marco Romano left a comment on one of my most recent posts and confessed that “Rioja is the wine that turned me into a lover of wine with food. Grilled lamb chops marinated in olive oil, garlic, pimenton, cumin and arbol chilies over charcoal with a Rioja reserva. Ah…”

Of course, I immediately asked for a recipe, and he quickly complied.

As for the grape vines, well, that’s the hard part.  A 2006 Wine News article on cooking with vines, written by Carole Kotkin, suggested contacting Kalmazoo Outdoor Gourmet, which sells grape vine chips, although I took a look at the website, and “grape vines” appears to be missing from the order form, even though it’s mentioned as an option on the product list. A phone call is definitely in order.

Or you can do what I plan to do next week, after I get back from Napa: call your nearest winery.

Grilled Marinated Lamb Chops
Recipe submitted by Marco Romano
4 loin chops, or 8 baby loin chops (chuletillas), if you want to get really authentic
1/4 cup olive oil
1 tsp. sherry vinegar
3 cloves roasted or raw minced garlic
1 tsp+ pimenton
1 tsp+ ground cumin
Ground arbol chilies* to taste
Salt & pepper

Mix the oil and vinegar with the garlic and spices, and marinate lamb for 2-4 hrs. at room temperature. Grill over hardwood in an outdoor pit.**

Serves Two
Wine Pairing Suggestions: Mr. Romano recommends the following Reservas

Lopez de Heredia “Vina Tondonia”
Muga “Seleccion Especial”
Contino
CVNE
Sierra Cantabria
Marques de Murrieta
Monte Real
Rioja Alta
Vina Real

*Chiles de Arbol, usually sold whole, are available at Latin markets across the country and at select Whole Foods.

**A good substitute for vine chips would be chips of some easier to find fruit woods: apple, apricot, cherry, nectarine, or peach.  Check out barbecuewood.com or kalamazogourmet.com.  I must confess that I have never cooked with wood before, but the three websites linked in this post seem to have enough information to steer us in the right direction. Still, proceed with caution.

RIOJA MASTER CLASS: Chad Wilmouth of the Culinary Institute of America Greystone, left, records Jorge Muga’s introduction to the topography, soils, and microclimates of Rioja, on a roadside overlooking the Ebro valley near the town of Villalba de Rioja, Spain, September 10, 2007. The narrow gorges that demarcate the northwestern limit of Rioja viticulture, Las Conchas de Haro, are visible in the background. Photo: Jon Stamell.

It’s been really thrilling going through all of the footage John Barkley and Chad Wilmouth recorded while we were in Rioja last September; since I was always busy interviewing, I rarely took notes and felt afterwards somewhat detached from the material, that is, until I got a hold of all the interviews, in their entirety, in a series of DVDs John handed me in mid-December.

One of the most impressive and certainly the most comprehensive of those interviews was the interview, or rather series of interviews, I had with Bodegas Muga winemaker Jorge Muga. As I was taking notes watching the footage, I ended up transcribing maybe 75% to 80% of his comments, so wide in scope were the topics he covered, so detailed and easy to comprehend were the things he said. And while his focus was primarily on his family’s vineyards and his bodega’s wines, Mr. Muga had also a lot to say about the region as a single entity, as well as the soil and microclimatic variations of its constituent parts. I can’t wait to see it all integrated into the final DVD.

In the meantime, I finally got around to editing some of the audio that Chris Fleming made available to me over the summer, including over two hours of his own interview with Jorge Muga, discovering in the process that many of the topics covered in the DVD interviews are also dealt with in depth in the audio Chris captured at Bodegas Muga last spring. I remember Chris telling me how impressed he was with Sr Muga’s presentation, calling it “a master class in the viticulture of Rioja,” so it seems appropriate that we should begin with him.

Jorge Muga’s edited comments, tied together with some of my own brief commentary, comprise the first edition of the Rioja Podcast, linked below. I hope you find it worthwhile.

 

 Rioja Podcast 1: Jorge Muga at the Frontiers of Rioja: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download (98)