Blame it on Rioja

From a 2008 food & wine-trend annual wrap-up that appeared online at (Washington) dcexaminer.com:

By Jeff Dufour
Examiner Columnist 12/30/08

WASHINGTON – This year might not have equaled 2007 in terms of food news, when Wolfgang Puck and Eric Ripert arrived on the crest of a wave that brought us a panoply of impressive new restaurants. But 2008 was no slouch of a year, either, bringing with it some terrific new concepts and fresh talent. Here’s a look at some of the trends that made the year in restaurants…

6. Spanish wine: Names like Rioja and Tempranillo have entered the lexicon of many diners and drinkers, as more and more bars are serving Iberian wines. Why? We asked John Wabeck, the sommelier at the forthcoming Inox in Tysons Corner. “The pricing still is reasonable, especially for the quality,” he said. “They tend to be a little more full-bodied than a lot of pinot noirs, but not as tannic and full-bodied as cabernet would be. They’re very good food wines.”

Leading a tasting for a group of 20 or 30-somethings, especially compared to ten or fifteen years ago, these days is a little like teaching literature to a bunch of former slackers who have in the intervening years finally realized that reading great books is not only NOT lame but also one of of life’s most edifying and endlessly renewable joys.

That broadening of sensibility and palate is doing wonders for the wine market, even in difficult times.  The $27 wine may have given way to the $11 wine four out of five nights for most consumers, young and old, but drinking they are most certainly doing.

And just as I have witnessed the growth of cheese sophistication and product recognizability in my ten-plus years working the boards of two of this country’s most accomplished cheese programs, so too I am seeing wine consumers grow increasingly less daunted by all those funny names, by those grapes they didn’t even existed the year before, by the ritual of accepting (and in some cases returning) a bottle opened tableside.  Pay a little attention, and there are rewards–social, gustatory, and even spiritual.

A on-going series devoted to finding tasty wines for less than $20

Barbara Werley MS, one of the five sommeliers who joined us earlier this year in Rioja, was recently part of a tasting panel convened the Dallas Morning News, which took a look at a bunch of wines paired next to cider-braised pork shoulder with carmelized onions.

“Our panel favorite was a citrusy chardonnay from New Mexico, surprisingly,” Tina Danze writes in her tasting report, which appeared last Thursday.  She continues, “Only one of four reds sampled had the right soft, fruity profile to mesh with the dish.”

That red turned out to be Marqués de Cáceres 2004 Rioja Crianza, a complex quaffable widely available across the country for less than $14 a bottle.

Here’s the panel’s write up:

Crianza isn’t a varietal; it’s a term referring to the amount of time a Spanish wine has been aged one year in oak, and another year in the bottle for those from the Rioja region. Made of 85 percent tempranillo, this wine’s ripe cherry, strawberry and raspberry flavors laced with cinnamon notes proved an ideal partner for the pork. “It’s simple, soft and fruity, with no bitter finish,” said Barbara Werley. “It’s the best of the reds [sampled].” James Tidwell noted that unlike other reds, it’s “not gushy-fruity, not bubble gummy grape-y. It’s ripe pure fruit without a lot of oak.” Blythe Beck liked the way the wine “meshes well with the fat” in the pork and the mashed potatoes. George Howald hailed this as “a balanced wine that integrates nicely with the dish.”

With a little nosing around online–the Pro version of www.wine-searcher.com also helps, a bargain at $29.95 a year–one could score bottles of the ‘04 Cáceres for quite a bit less than the $18.99 list price mentioned in the DMN piece. In fact, one of the lowest prices I found was right here in NYC: $10.99 a bottle at 67 Wine & Spirits in good ole Manahatta.

Like the airing of Christmas music before Thanksgiving or a major newspaper’s rating of a restaurant a mere four weeks after opening (unheard of in Ruth Reichl’s day at the NY Times), Best of 2008 lists seem to be arriving earlier and earlier these days.  

Just out earlier this week, is the Wine Spectator’s 2008 Top 100, with a full report available online.

Of the six Spanish wines selected by the editors of the esteemed (and in some circles, controversial) U.S. wine magazine, three carry the D.O.Ca. Rioja back label: Bodegas LAN 2004 Rioja Reserva (#52), Bodegas Muga 2004 Rioja Reserva (#65), and Sierra Cantabria Rioja Crianza 2004 (#71).

Nineteen wines, nearly a fifth of those on the list, retail for $20 or less, good news for point followers on a budget. The LAN Reserva retails for around $17; the Sierra Cantabria for $20; the Muga Reserva is about $30.

Which means that, among Rioja representatives, that value percentage jumps to two thirds.

It is also very interesting to note that two of the three Rioja wines on the list (Muga and Sierra Cantabria) are explicitly ‘classic’ expressions of Rioja, relatively long aging in American oak, cigar box aromas, pronounced earthiness, etc. At a time when the extracted modern style, with French oak aging, super-concentrated fruit, early release, etc., continues its commercial ascent, it’s curious that one of the publications most responsible for that trend is now bucking it slightly.

And now back to wine….

Two press-release wire services have reported within the last two weeks that nine bodegas in D.O.Ca. Rioja are backing a comprehensive research and development project to increase dramatically two key polyphenols shown in recent studies to possess properties beneficial to health. Here’s an excerpt from a press release that appeared on NewswireToday.com:

Nine wineries from La Rioja (Bodegas Bilbaínas, Bodegas Dinastía Vivanco, Bodegas Viña Hermosa - Santiago Ijalba, Bodegas Juan Alcorta, Marqués de Murrieta, Bodegas Ontañón, Bodegas Patrocinio, Regalía de Ollauri and Bodegas Riojanas) have spent a year developing a pioneering project worldwide to elaborate wines with quercitin and reseveratrol levels 10 times higher than those currently obtained.

Throughout the 2008 production amounts of these polyphenols have been shown to be increasing at these nine selected wineries. This has been proven through a variety of tests such as, physical-chemical treatments, controls and analysis along its vegetative process prior to ripening.

The harvest has been recently completed and these special treatments have been performed on the grapes harvested. Currently the first micro-vinifications and elaborations on a pilot scale are being developed. The first R&D wines made from these grapes will be bottled over the next year.

This development is news to me. I had no idea this kind of research was going on. It’s part brilliant/part, well, I don’t know, unsettling. How are they isolating and increasing the levels of these compounds? How do these increased levels affect the flavor and texture of the wine, if at all? Is the market ready for polyphenolically-fortified wines? Is it a risky move at a time when minimal intervention at the winery is gaining favor or is a tactically brilliant maneuver that will act as a lightening rod of worldwide attention towards the fascinating interplay of tradition and innovation taking place in the upper Ebro Valley these days?

We shall see. Time to start asking questions.

TO: Christmas Wines

FROM: UK Telegraph

RE: Be Yourself!

An ongoing series dedicated to finding tasty and distinctive Rioja wines for less than $20

It’s a particularly British thing to use notions of class when describing wine, but I really love the metaphor used by the London Telegraph over the weekend in an article entitled, “Wines for Christmas: Drink Up and Don’t Break the Bank” (Do any American newspapers ever refer to this time of year as Christmas anymore?):

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The other night at Barcelona Restaurant in Greenwich, CT, I found two more wines to add to our growing list of Rioja wines that retail for less than $20 and also deliver great value.

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Arrived to work at Chanterelle yesterday to find tucked into Roger Dagorn MS’s mailbox the latest (Dec. 15, 2008) issue of The Wine Spectator, with an enormous portrait of the town of Elciego on its cover, bled to the absolute margins of the page.

Wow.

No matter how you feel about the Spectator and its 100-point rating system (see last post), its influence among consumers and segments on the trade is considerable and it exposure undeniable. Which means that seeing two of Rioja’s most distinguishing landmarks, Frank Gehry’s City of Wine at Marqués de Riscal and the Sierra de Cantabria, on its cover is a little like my mom seeing two of her children on the Today show.

I’ve only glanced over the article, having had to work last night, but will be sure to do so tomorrow, my next day off. But from what I can gather, it covers not only the region’s wines but also catalogs its architectural triumphs, its tapas scene in Logroño, its rise in recent years as a travel destination. In other words, my professional obsessions for the past two years.

A full report to follow.