Gulp Me Now: Dinastía Vivanco gets its Due
Happy to see a wine that caught my fancy during a trip last year to Rioja—Dinastía Vivanco’s juicy blanco, made from 80% Viura and 20% Malvasia—get a nice mention in a recent Bloomberg.com column written by Elin McCoy, “Cobweb-Coated $440 White Riojas Battle Onslaught of Chardonnay.”
“The pervasive crisp, modern, drink-it-now style of Rioja blanco started in the 1970s when producers abandoned traditional oak aging for temperature-controlled fermenters and stainless steel tanks,” McCoy explains.
“Alas, many of these wines are simple, no-personality quaffers. But Bodegas Dinastia Vivanco’s fresh, lemony, gulp-me- please 2008 blanco (a viura/malvasia blend) was a delicious aperitif, which I sipped before a dinner at their restaurant. A bargain at $11, the wine arrives in the U.S. in early 2010.”
Nice, too, that I was with McCoy—a terrifically energetic and perceptive taster, I might add—not only on her first visit to Vivanco (and its awesome museum) back in 2006 but was also on hand for her first taste of the bodega’s 2008 Blanco at a tasting in New York City earlier this year. The 2008 blanco is the third vintage overseen by the talented young scion of the Vivanco dynasty, Rafael Vivanco.
(Alas, I was not present during the dinner she mentioned, which took place, I imagine, when McCoy was in Rioja for the Rioja Wine Future talk hosted by Robert M. Parker, Jr., the influential wine critic whose professional life she documented in her 2005 biography, The Emporer of Wine.)
But back to my point. I liked McCoy’s comments not only because I could trace my own experience with, and impressions of, this bodega’s wines along more or less the same time frame as hers, but also because I have felt for some time now that it was high time that this bodega started to get some props for more than its museum.
As I wrote in a post last year,
For years, the wines of this bodega, based in the Rioja Alta town of Briones and now managed by the Vivanco family’s fourth generation, played second fiddle to its terrific–and, I might add, non-self promotional–Museum of Wine Culture. I am pleased to say that this is no longer the case.
Winemaker Rafael Vivanco, who graduated two years ago with a Diplôme National d’Oenologie from the University of Bordeaux, is as kind and unassuming as he is influential. He’s also recently made some killer wines. I’d like to spend some more time in the future writing about the entire lineup we tasted today, a portfolio slowly making inroads in the American market, but for now, as an expample, let me say that Rafael’s latest blanco release, from the 2006 vintage, took everyone by surprise. Sourced from the best Viura plantings Rafael could find and kept on its lees for several months, the 2006 Dinastía Vivanco Blanco is as vibrant a white wine you’re likely to find anywhere in Rioja. With correct tree-fruit aromatics and a hint of citrus on the nose, the wine gives no hint to the mouth-watering acidity that hits the tongue on first taste.
Sure is nice when that happens.
February 1st, 2010 at 9:38 am
Sorry I missed your post when it first came out.
Thanks so much for your support, and for the thought. I agree that the amazing museum so often overshadows any stories or interest in the wines and writers often only have a limited space to dedicate to any one winery from a trip.
The good news is that the wines will begin to be imported in earnest very soon as Dinastia Vivanco have a new US importer, so fingers crossed for more US tasting opportunities in the near future.