Blame it on Rioja

Chanterelle Master Sommelier Roger Dagorn had told me that I would have fun traveling with seasoned food and wine journalist David Rosengarten, who accompanied us on our last trip to Spain, but I wasn’t quite expecting to find myself engaged in twenty-minute, Rioja-fueled, aristocratic English-inflected improvisational comedy act with Rosengarten and Chicago-based sommelier Russel Corzine on the front patio of Kate Zaharra restaurant overlooking the twinkling city of Bilbao at two o’clock in the morning.

Which is exactly what happened on our last night in Spain, which for multitudinous reasons was equal parts hedonistic, surreal, and belly-achingly hilarious. I am not sure what our audience of one, Kelly Bucher, thought of our stream-of-consciousness routine, but we were amused. The details of what we actually said are a little hazy, but I do remember at one point Corzine gesturing out to the city lights in the distance and saying something like, “Don’t you see the campfires of your loyal subjects, my liege? They burn tonight in anticipation of this momentous decision.”

I thought of this moment when I read Rosengarten’s terrific blog entry on the trip, “Love Letter to Red Rioja,” which betrays only the slightest hint of how that particular night ended, referring to the “baronial chairs” to be found in the wine-bedecked cellar of Kate Zaharra, where one begins the evening at this gem of a restaurant drinking wine and snacking on jamón iberico. It was precisely my decision to sit at the head of table when we first arrived, in one of those throne-like chairs, that led to all this “my liege” business and, ultimately, to our quasi-chemically-induced experimental theater.

Beyond all that rush of nostalgia, the article confirmed that my erstwhile traveling companion came to a conclusion about the wines of Rioja that demonstrates that he was most definitely paying close attention:

I arrived in Rioja with a smidge of cynicism about its now-famous modernization, because I really loved the way things were 20 years ago. But I quickly discovered something amazing. Red Rioja today is not a simple battlefield of traditionalists vs. modernists. Red Rioja today is a smorgasbord, where a very wide range of red-wine types is being generated. Sure, it ’s much harder to keep track than ever….but if you know what you’re doing, red Rioja is a very amusing playground.