Blame it on Rioja

James Oliver Cury, executive editor of Epicurious.com, wrote in his Epi-log blog recently, wondering, “When will wine prices go down?” It seems like in recessionary times everyone is looking for good values, and it’s been a mission of mine to track down what Rioja has to offer in that vein.

With Thanksgiving fast approaching, I wanted to write a little bit about a feast-friendly wine called Seis de Luberri 2006 from winemaker Florentino Martinez Monje. This is classic Rioja Alavesa, with a modern focus. Made from 100% Tempranillo, Seis is stainless steel fermented, then aged for six months in French and American oak (hence the name, “Seis,” which is Spanish for six). It’s a super jammy wine, with strong notes of raspberries and strawberries and a great background of spicy wood tones. This is technically considered a Joven, since by law Crianzas must be aged at least twelve months in oak, but it’s definitely one of the most complex ‘quaffables’ I’ve encountered from Rioja, ever.

It’s imported here by Andre Tamers at De Maison Selections, an under-the-radar importer of French and Spanish wines who has one of the top palates in the business.

Seis de Luberri is available for online purchase at Amanti Vino in New Jersey for $19.99 a bottle.

OR, if you happen to find yourself in Brooklyn this week, and want to save on delivery costs, Seis de Luberri 2006, is one of ten featured Thanksgiving “Wines for the Feast,” at Dandelion Wine, a.k.a. Dandy in Greenpoint, Brooklyn, $21/bottle. *

*Present a printed copy of this post at Dandy to receive a 10% discount on this wine, while supplies last.

Dandelion Wine is located at 153 Franklin Street, between Java and India in Greenpoint, Brooklyn. Or call 347 689 4563, and ask for Lily.

Photo credit: Gretchen Thomas

Friday, September 12, 2008

Absolutely gorgeous morning in Rioja today, a little cold even, as we arrive to our first destination, Bodegas Fernando Remírez de Ganuza in Sanmaniego, a town in the Rioja Alavesa nestled right up under the Sierra de Cantabria mountains . The winery is just off the town’s main square, an impeccably clean and eminently modern facility cloaked in traditional garb, the kind of place that I imagine a lot of people conjure up when they imagine owning a bodega in Rioja. Most but not all of the winery’s vineyards are on a southward-facing slope just below the town, a stone’s throw from the bodega. The soil here is limestone and clay; elevation between 550 and 600 meters above sea level.

Export manager Luis Alberto greets us and is quite amenable to our suggestion that we begin with a tasting of the wines before continuing with the tour. Too often we’ve found ourselves hurrying through tastings after being led a lengthy tour, and knowing that our day booked solid, I’m determined to keep us on schedule.

Wine writer Gerry Dawes introduced me to the notion of certain modern Rioja winemakers’ having classic palates, and I think Fernando Remírez de Ganuza is one of them. I also think that these are the kind of wines that show better with some bottle age. The bodega’s now scarce 2001 Reserva, a wine we used to carry at Chanterellle and which I sampled again recently at a Tempranillo, Inc. tasting in New York, is a superlative Rioja, balanced, elegant, possessing heft for sure but so delicately structured, so remarkably alive with acidity, so aromatically dazzling, that I was half-tempted to buy a magnum of it for lunch.

The 2004 Reserva (90% Tempranillo, 10% Graciano; with 2 years in all new oak, 80% French and 20% American) on the other hand, while aromatically enticing (red fruit, violets, baking spices, and tar), struck me as a little young, a bit muted. I don’t expect that to be the case in a couple of years’ time. The bodega’s 2005 Trasnocho was a real eye-opener. Press wine is what you could call “squeeze wine,” the dense and extremely tannic result taking what’s left in the fermentation tank after the free-run juice is siphoned off and squeezing the hell out of it. Winemakers then typically add small amounts of this to their barrels, using it almost like a seasoning.

Not here. Using a method of his own design, Sr. Remírez de Ganuza drops a plastic membrane into his tanks and fills it slowly with warm water, gently pressing the contents for 24 hours (it used to be done in half the time, overnight, hence the name), so as not to extract the harsh and bitter tannins from the pips.

With 20 months in new French oak barrels and 12 in bottle before release, the Trasnocho is still quite tannic and certainly not your typical Rioja. It’s a beautiful wine nevertheless-very dense, very pretty, herbaceous, mouth-watering. It’s also unavailable in the U.S. market and, unsurprisingly, made in very small quantities.

A reader named Abel Iturriaga recently wrote in about a very pleasant experience he had visiting Bodegas Santiago Ijalba in Gimileo, a village in Rioja Alta situated about half-way between Haro and Briones on the old Logroño highway.

Ijalba tends towards the modern style, making two types of blancos, Ermita San Felices (stainless steel fermented in the Marques de Cáceres style) and Abando Blanco, late-harvest Viura fermented in American oak barricas (most barrel fermented whites use French oak) and kept on its lees for five months. Although the Abando Blanco is clearly produced in the modern way, my notes from a 2006 T. Edward tasting say that it still “retains the best traits of the traditional style–nutty and complex.” I quite liked the Ogga 2000 Reserva, a 100% Tempranillo-based wine made from 60 year old vines and aged for 17 months in French oak and 3 months in American oak. I found the wine to have “good acidity, a dose of pepper, and a lengthy finish. Nice balance of modern and traditional aromas.”

Oddly enough, the Ogga 2001 Reserva, which I ordered in January of this year at Casa Mono with my friend Colum Sheehan, the GM at Babbo, disappointed me, as it lacked the balance I really liked in the 2000; I found it a little too extracted and somewhat over the top. A quick glance at the bodega’s website today, and I discovered that the winemaker has done away with the 3 months of American oak aging for the Ogga Reserva, opting instead for a full 20 months in French oak, which I suspect is all or mostly new oak. I also learned that the 2001 underwent three days of pre-fermentation maceration, although I don’t recall if the same was done for the 2000. In my view, the 2001 still needs time to mellow. Not surprisingly, Jay Miller of the Wine Advocate quite liked the 2001 Reserva, giving it 91 points in his most recent review of Spanish wine.

And here we enter again into a debate playing out all over the world: does the movement away from established methods of vinification, even if we’re talking about a mere 3 months in a different oak type, make a wine any less regionally specific?

I think more important, and I suspect most of my sommelier colleagues would agree, is how does the food compatibility of a new version of the same wine compare with that of its predecessor? In this case, I have to say that I think the 2000 might be a better choice to enjoy with a meal, even as I fully understand the rationale behind the winemaker’s decision in this case to tweak his wine in a different direction.

Ogga 2001 Reserva is imported by T. Edward Wines.

Marcos Eguren at Viñedos de Páganos in Rioja Alavesa, in front of the vineyard used to make El Puntido. Photo: Jon Stamell.

As I mentioned in my last post, Marcos Eguren is member of a family of vine growers now in its fifth generation. The Egurens have been marketing wines under their own label since 1958, when brothers Guillermo and Victorino Eguren launched Sierra Cantabria with bother-in-law Martín Cendoya, a viticulturalist.

Today, Marcos Eguren, Guillermo’s son, heads both vineyard management and winemaking, having expanded the brand not only in Rioja, with Sierra Cantabria spin-offs Señorío de San Vicente and Viñedos de Páganos, but also in other parts of Spain, most notably in Toro, where Numathia Termes has raised more than a few eyebrows among the foreign wine press.

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As mentioned in my last post, I taught a class at Murray’s Cheese Greenwich Village on Tuesday, September 24, called Viva Rioja. Below is our lineup of wine and cheese:

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Two nights ago, I dropped by Mercat, a new Catalan restaurant in the neighborhood, with my good man Mike Gitter, and found the atmosphere eminently convivial and the front-of-the house staff solicitous and polished, quite a feat considering that it was the Bond Street eatery’s first night officially open for business.

Not at all fair to go into great detail about what I thought of the food, given that the place is so spanking new, I still have to give a nod to one dish that definitely worked: a grilled skewer of snails, chorizo, and cioppolini topped with salsa verde, an unlikely combination of textures and flavors that must be enjoyed all at once, with one slide of the skewer, to get its full effect. An inspired creation that’s part of their house menu (as opposed to traditional offerings).

Even more surprising were the two house Riojas by the glass, the “Orobio” white and red from the house of Artadi, famous for their blockbusting new-generation wines. Priced at a fraction of the cost of its flagship red, “El Pison,” the new “Orobio” white and red are meant to be, according to the website of American importer Eric Solomon, “fresh, fruity wines of easy consumption,” and I would say that that’s exactly what they are. The red, a 2004 with six to ten months in French oak, not enough oak age to qualify as a Crianza, goes down super-easy, but still has a well-integrated tannic structure and plenty of acidity, a balance that invites food.

The white, though, is the real stunner. Half of the 100% Viura grapes are barrel fermented in French oak, the other half in stainless steel; the blend is utterly enticing in its aromatics (thanks to the oak) without being punch-you-in-the-mouth tropical fruity; the wine’s acidity is absolutely bracing. Mike and I dropped another $100 ordering two bottles of Spanish whites we thought might outdo our aperitif Orobio whites, and both choices were outgunned by this affordable spring beauty.