Blame it on Rioja

SINGLE OLIVE TREE, SINGLE VINEYARD: Jesus Madrazo’s Viña del Olivo at CVNE’s Viñedos de Contino, Laserna, Spain, September 13, 2007. Photo: José Guerra.

Late last week, an email newsletter from the East Village Spanish wine shop Tinto Fino alerted me to an article that recently appeared in The Wall Street Journal monthly, SmartMoney: “Is Spain the New Bordeaux?”.

James B. Stewart’s “SmartSpending” piece chronicles an informal blind tasting he recently organized in which wines from two top Bordeaux properties, Cheateau Pape Clement 2004 ($80) and Chateau Mouton Rothschild 2004 ($275), were tasted alongside a broad range of ten Spanish wines selected by Tinto Fino’s Mani Dawes, the idea being to test Spanish mettle against a category of French wine that’s quickly becoming a stand-in for both inflated pricing and a weak dollar.

“The results confounded our expectations,” Stewart writes. “Of the many tastings we’ve done, this was perhaps the most humbling — and enjoyable.” Once the panel determined their top four wines, the labels were revealed. Viñedos de Contino’s powerhouse Viña del Olivo Rioja 2001 was the overwhelming favorite: “We couldn’t get enough of this. We found its nose elegant and its taste rich, full, a bit tannic; it boasted a long, velvety finish. It won two votes as a Bordeaux, but others found it a little too extroverted to qualify. Though steep in price [$125 for a 750ml bottle], it’s still a bargain by first-growth-Bordeaux standards.”

Next came El Bugader Montsant 2004($63), followed by Valbuena Ribera del Duero 2001 ($125). Pape Clement, the panel’s number four pick, was the sole Bordeaux to place.

Admittedly, young wines from a problematic vintage* do not a great property define. One must also consider the fact that the instant Mr. Stewart decided to ask Ms. Dawes to select the Spanish entrants, France was at an immediate disadvantage; few in the business know Spanish wines like she does, and her palate judgments, if the wine selection at Tinto Fino is any indication, are impeccable.

Still, I suspect that this is not the last time we hear about the wine cognescenti looking south towards Spain for wines that offer stunning quality without the ‘dollar hangover.’

As Spanish winemakers keep ratcheting up quality and wine consumers continue to educate themselves about killer wines made south of the Pyrenees that won’t break the bank, new and established brands in Rioja and beyond will start looking sweeter and sweeter to serious wine collectors and consumers alike.

We very well could be at the beginning of a paradigm shift. In many ways Spain has already trumped France in the world of gastronomy. Could the world of wine be far behind?

*NOTE: After the exuberant New World drink-me-now ripeness that attended the hot vintage of 2003, 2004 in Bordeaux returned to what many have called a more classic style, which is to say, one that needs years in the bottle to develop. See Jancis Robinson’s lucid comments on the matter.

Among my colleagues on the restaurant side of the wine trade, it’s become fairly axiomatic that writer Matt Kramer is the best (some say only) reason to read Wine Spectator Magazine. If you aspire to an advanced understanding of the aesthetics of wine connoisseurship, look no further than Mr. Kramer’s Making Sense of Wine, a fine example of essential reading that’s also a pleasure to read.

In this month’s Wine Spectator, devoted to the editors’ 100 most exciting wines of 2007 (Rioja shout-outs: #11,Torre Muga 2004; and #16 LAN Edición Limitada 2004), Kramer writes about his “reverie wines” of 2007 (subscription required). In typically passionate, readable prose, he explains just what he means by reverie:

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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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If, like me, you had neither funds nor the foresight to attend the New York Wine Experience this weekend, you can get a taste of it at Tinto Fino in the East Village on Saturday, when the classy little Spanish-only wine shop hosts a “Meet and Taste” with Manuel Muga of Bodegas Muga and Jose Manuel Azofra of Sierra Cantabria, representatives of two key Rioja bodegas pouring their wines live and in person.

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So, why am I hankering so hard for Marqués de Murrieta’s Capellanía Reserva 2002? I assure you it’s not just because Tamara Lover has tasted it and I haven’t. Most alluring is the fact that it’s also both rare and unusual.

I first came across a reference to Capellanía doing research for my upcoming trip in Wines of Rioja (Mitchell Beazley, 2004), in which author John Radford describes the wine as a “post-modern take on classic [white] Rioja…quite delicious.” I came across it again in a Giles Macdonogh article entitled “Rioja: Evolution” (Decanter, June 2004, pp. 63-68), in which Macdonogh reports that Capellanía’s 9 heactare (22 acre) plot “is due to be halved again, with prices set to double.” Then I looked for it on Wine Searcher and I couldn’t believe my eyes: According to my search, only one store in the U.S. carries it, Hart Davis Hart Wine Co. in Chicago, IL. So, of course I went onto the Hart Davis Hart site to see how much they on hand. Answer: one bottle at $15.

It’s also the only white wine produced by Marqués de Murrieta, Rioja’s oldest winery and still one its best producers. Luciano de Murrieta made his first vintage in 1852 after several years of studying winemaking in Bordeaux, the first Rioja producer to use oak barrels for aging. Today, the bodega is owned and operated by Vicente Dalmau Cebrián Sagarriga, whose father, Don Vicente, Conde de Creixell, bought the winery from the heirs of the original  Marqués in 1983.

The young count has been quietly revolutionizing one of Rioja’s most revered institutions in recent years, and doing so in typical Riojano fashion: updating and innovating while simultaneously preserving tradition. He has introduced an ultramodern wine, Dalmau Reserva (85% Tempranillo, 10% Cabernet Sauvignon, and 5% Graciano, with 23 months in French oak), sourced from the oldest vineyard at the venerable Ygay Estate, purchased by Luciano back in 1872. “A thoroughly modern vino del autor,” according to traditionalist champion Gerry Dawes (”Rioja on the Prowl” Wine News Magazine, October/November 2002), “But it preserves the best of Murrieta’s classic style.”

Long associated with ultra-traditional winemaking, Murrieta built its reputation largely on its flagship Castillo Ygay Gran Reserva Especial, which is still in production and has maintained its old world character under winemaker María Vargas, despite necessary updates at the bodega and a slight (two year) shortening of bottle aging before release.

What makes Capellania so unusual is the fact that it is not a work of preservation; rather, it’s a relatively new project that looks to the past for inspiration: long oak aging, slightly oxidative flavors, etc. “An astonishing vote of confidence in traditional-style Rioja,” John Radford writes, “when almost everyone else was moving away from it.”

Don’t try to stop me. Come tomorrow, that one bottle in Chicago gets a one way ticket to NYC. Send me a note; if you live in New York City I just might share it with you.

Spanish wine expert par excellence Helio San Miguel, the man behind the Cervantes Institute’s vaunted Wines of Spain Seminar Series, last year devoted an entire evening to a vertical tasting of Bodegas Miguel Merino Reservas called ‘Under the Radar,’ beginning with Merino’s first vintage, 1994, explaining in the course handout that “Miguel Merino wines are always the biggest surprise at blind tastings, time after time outperforming the most optimistic expectations and eclipsing much more famous names.”

In Wines of Rioja (Mitchel Beazley, 2004), John Radford writes that Merino’s “self-effacing charm [and] devotion to his bodega…ensure that one day he will be a superstar of Rioja.”

Merino set up his small bodega in the early 1990s on the outskirts of Briones, a quaint hilltop village in the Rioja Alta sub-region, after a career devoted to the business and marketing side of the wine industry. Today, he works nine hectares of his own vineyards (augmenting his harvest with grapes from a few growers nearby) and makes a silky and approachable wine with the impressive structure of a modern-styled Rioja and the admirable and food-friendly finesse of a more classically-styled Rioja. I’ve used his wines in three tastings over the last year and a half; to my taste, Merino’s wines are lovely example of a modern Rioja with a recognizably Riojano taste.

• Tomorrow, Friday, July 20, if you live in the New York area, you can taste for yourself: the East Village’s Tinto Fino, an elegant little shop devoted exclusively to Spanish wines, will be hosting a tasting of Merino’s newly released 2000 Reserva from 6:00p.m. to 8:00 p.m.

For more information: www.tintofino.com

In ten years’ time, when we look back on Rioja’s trajectory into the American popular imagination, it’s my guess that 2006 will stand out as a watershed year. (more…)