Tasty Balance from Álava: Dominio de Berzal Crianza 2005
In Rioja there are plenty of bodegas offering up the über-classical style–the soft-spoken and slightly oxidative character that comes from long-oak aging in seasoned American oak (a godsend to blind tasters, I might add)–and plenty of young upstarts carrying the banner of innovation in both field and cellar, espousing the new (and quite expensive) tenets of ripeness, single vineyards, and shorter time in new French oak barriques.
But , as I have said many times in these pages and elsewhere, the story of Rioja is being written by the vast number bodegas working with the resources at their disposal to strike the right balance between the two poles, a balance that might raise an eyebrow or two in the competitive international market but can also satisfy the unrepentant conservative tastes of the domestic Spanish market as well as the increasingly common incidence of international palates growing weary of the ultra-extracted, hard-to-identify-as-coming-from-a-specific-place kind of wine saturating the market.
At the urging of my wineshop-owning girlfriend, I sampled a wine at last month’s Rioja Grand Tasting that could very well be the poster child for this precarious and delicious balance, a fact driven home when I tasted it yet again in her Brooklyn shop last night, this time at the urging of her long-time wine consigleri and NYC wine-biz veteran, Tom Athans. The wine is Dominio de Berzal Rioja Crianza 2005, from Baños de Ebro in Rioja Alavesa.
In typical Alavesa fashion, the family-run Dominio de Berzal made a name for itself, from its founding in 1980 on, producing wines sin crianza, which is to say, without oak-aging, producing the light, young fruity reds made using the method of carbonic maceration that have come define the Álava subzone.
At the turn of the present century, the family changed gears and opted for a 60%-40% American oak to French oak regimen for their more prestigious line-up of aged wines, produced alongside their DOCa Rioja entries in a brand-spanking new facility on the banks of the Ebro river.
Bright black fruit and sunny ripeness from 50 hectares of largely south-facing vineyards give the ‘05 Crianza, 90% Tempranillo and 10% Graciano, a ripe plum lushness on the attack; but shortly afterwards, a pleasant harmony of slightly vegetal/subtle vanillin flavors calm the mind, telling it, “Ahh…this…is Spain.”
Dominio de Berzal Rioja Crianza is $26/bottle at Dandelion Wine. For suppliers outside the New York Metropolitan area, contact Camilo Ceballos of Omni Wines at 718-353-8700.