Blame it on Rioja

Two weeks ago today, I moderated a Rioja tasting in the meatpacking district of New York, leading some of the city’s top wine practitioners in the press and restaurant industry through a series of Riojas blancos, rosados and tintos from a broad range of styles.Largely the brainchild of Pia Mara Finkell of CRT/tanaka, the agency that administers the Vibrant Rioja campaign and at whose NYC offices the tasting took place, the panel tasting provided a unique, relaxed venue in which tasters of disparate backgrounds and palate preferences could have a free-form discussion about the wines being tasted, about the state of Rioja wine in general, and, occasionally, about the complex interplay today among winemakers, wine critics, and the consumers who keep the whole game in play.

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Dutch Angle/Spanish Wine: (From left) ADM, photographer Nigel Barker, and Rebeca Gomez of Rioja’s Consejo Regulador, New York City, Wednesday, December 5, 2007. Photo: Kendyl Wright.

While admittedly not an avid television watcher, I’d be lying if I said it wasn’t pretty damn cool to lead a Rioja tasting a few weeks ago at the studios of photographer Nigel Barker, a judge on the CW Network’s America’s Next Top Model.

Mr. Barker is a professed fan of Rioja and of pretty much all things Spanish, having lived in Spain for many years with his family, and he struck up a friendship with Vibrant Rioja’s Kendyl Wright during September’s Fashion Week, for which Rioja was the official wine. In the event, Kendyl arranged for a tasting at the photographer’s studio in the Meatpacking District in early December and asked me to lead it.

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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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One of the season’s chichiest wine events, the annual New York Wine Experience, spills out onto the carpeted terraces of the Marriott Marquis tomorrow night, inaugurating a three-day extravaganza of oenophilic excess set to the dulcet tones of Lite FM.

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Cristina Forner of Marqués de Cáceres (left)
and Rafael Vivanco of Bodegas Dinastía Vivanco

Tuesday, September 11, 2007
12:00 pm
On the road to Cenicero

Our post-interview tasting with Miguel Angel de Gregorio of Finca Allende in Briones was all too truncated. “It’s a shame you can’t stay,” De Gregorio told us as we said our goodbyes in the tower after having only tasted the Allende Blanco, “Because the wines will only keep getting better.” I believe him.

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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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Author’s Note: My “Letters from Haro” series will resume on Friday, picking up where we left off last, on Tuesday afternoon, September 11. My notebook and laptop contain enough reflections, profiles, and images to keep “Letters” going for at least another month, but in the interest of brevity, coverage of my recent trip to Rioja should wrap up sometime next week. And although I have been back in the U.S. for over a week now, I will continue using the same title for the series, a nod to consistency and a reflection of the fact that much of what you will read was indeed written while I was still on the ground in Spain.

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