Rioja in the News/on the Web: NYC, Seattle, and a Bunch of Rioja Values
CataVino, Monday, August 17 - Tinto Fino: An Exclusive Spanish Wine Shop in New York City
My friends and fellow Spanish wine bloggers Ryan and Gabriella Opaz posted a feature on New York City’s Tinto Fino, including an interview with one of the East Village wine shop’s owners, Kerin Auth, who included Zuazo Gaston Vendimia Seleccionada Rioja 2006 (around $14) as one of her top 5 overlooked Spanish wines currently available in the U.S. market.
The Risk Collective, Thursday, August 20 - Twice as nice: fabulous white and rose wines going for a song
The Risk Collective, a UK-based website I had not heard about before but which has a rather brilliant and inspiring mandate at its core—to empower and offer solidarity to women about to make monumental, positive changes to their lives, in whatever form—features a “Wine of the Week” post among its online offerings, and this week it was actually two wines from the same producer, Faustino V Rioja Blanco (around $8) and Rioja Rosado (around $13), both from the 2008 vintage, which author Roz Cooper finds “notably fresh and appealing, with relatively low alcohol (around 11.5%).”
Forbes, Friday, August 21 - Wines You Can Find: A Luscious Chardonnay and a Spicy Rioja
In Forbes‘ “Hi-Lo” wine feature, author Richard Nalley selects for his Lo (i.e. inexpensive) choice a Marqués de Cáceres Rioja Crianza 2005 (around $15).” Maybe it’s the four years of aging,” Nalley writes, “but this Tempranillo-based blend, with a dash of Garnacha (Grenache) and Graciano, has an intriguing turn of complexity. Medium-rich but well-concentrated and firm-bodied, it has a crushed blackberry-like fruit quality offset with a hint of what the winery calls ‘Mediterranean herbs.’”
Spanish Table in Seattle, Friday, August 21 - Pintxo Popping in Donostia
Sharon Baden and Steve Winston, owners of the Spanish Table in Seattle (and three other West Coast locations), are living the dream, traveling their hearts out all over, reporting back through their blog, and letting is know how we American consumers can order what’s on their menus and wine lists (their reputable retail, online, and mail order enterprise provide). Wine-searching readers of Eric Asimov’s recent article on Rioja in the New York Times, stymied by limited information about wineries’ precise labels, current price, or provenance should find this post quite useful.