White Rioja Tasting with Elin McCoy
Yesterday was quite a busy day. In what promises to be a more regular occurrence, the folks over at CRT/tanaka, the agency in Manhattan’s Meatpacking District that administers the Vibrant Rioja campaign, hosted an intimate roundtable discussion and tasting yesterday afternoon called ‘Rioja Under the Radar,’ centered on a selection of Rioja wines that we’ve found over the past year, bottlings that have gobs of character but haven’t gotten much attention in the press. I acted as moderator for the assembled group of trade and press [More about that tasting in a future post].
But the day actually started a bit earlier, with a one-on-one tasting at 9:30 a.m. (fine hour to swirl, I must say) with one of my favorite wine journalists, Elin McCoy, author of The Emporer of Wine: The Rise of Robert M. Parker, Jr. and the Reign of American Taste. Ms. McCoy contributes a monthly wine column to Bloomberg.com, and accompanied me once to several bodega visits in Rioja, during which I acted as an interpreter when necessary and otherwise filled in whatever context was needed as she worked to get her story.
I’ll leave my specific comments on the wines we tasted for another post, to give Ms. McCoy the opportunity to write up her own piece first, but I will say that the diversity of flavor profiles, quality levels, and styles was much more marked than I had anticipated, and that I very much enjoy tasting with this particular writer. I don’t know what it is exactly, but she likes to make tasting interactive, a dialogue of sorts. Very collegial and edifying. It’s fun and always illuminating.