Blame it on Rioja

In yet another sign that appreciation for “traditional” wines is hitting the mainstream, this week’s ‘Wines for the Weekend’ column on Forbes.com, entitled “Wines Columbus Would Drink,” features two classic-style wines–one from Italy, the other from Spain–going head-to-head for the holiday.

Tyler Colman, a.k.a. Dr. Vino, came up with the match-up (and a few other minor bouts), which pits a 2003 Barolo from Giuseppe Mascarello with a 1999 Rioja Reserva from the house of R. López de Heredia Viña Tondonia. Eric Arnold is the author.

The keywords for both wines: ‘light,’ ‘delicate,’ and ‘age.’ Preference is a subjective matter.

Click here to see a short video related to the taste off.

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.

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.

Thursday, September 11, 2008

In the midst of pretty intense renovations, Bodegas Olarra, a big operation located not from Logroño, nevertheless still exudes a particular brand of 1970s lounge ennui/cool (for me, a feel most perfectly captured by Manfred Mann Earth Band’s 1976 cover of Bruce Springsteen’s “Blinded by the Light”), especially true for the interior design the tasting room. Which makes sense, since the bodega was founded in 1972.

The wines here really took the group by surprise. It’s our first tasting today; we’re swirling glasses by 10:00 am. We’ve just toured this sprawling estate, and we’re sampling wines in a room that could pass for a Kubrick set, and…most of the line up we taste today is delicious and full of personality.

Since the bodega was founded in the 1970s, it’s unsurprising that American oak predominates here. Olarra’s Cerro Anon 2004 Crianza (82% Temranillo, the with the remainder made up of Viura, Grenache, Mazuelo, and Graciano) has an exceptional balance of fruit, acidity, and tannins. It’s juicy and thirst-quenching. On the modern end, I found the Summa 2001 Reserva a little too cherry bright for my taste, but a modern wine from Olarra’s sister bodega, Ondarre (which sources fruit exclusively from the nearby Rioja Baja village of Viana, in Navarra), the 2001 Mayor de Ondarre Reserva takes a subtler approach. The tannins are firm but the aromas–red fruit, baking spices, an earthy component–make you want to linger a bit longer.

On the way out, David Rosengarten, who, I am beginning to learn, is especially skilled as using his charm to get a little something extra out each situation without seeming overbearing, asks if by any chance there might be an older bottle of wine we could all taste. A few minutes later, our host Cándido Latorre shows up with a 1973 Olarra Gran Reserva. As expected, the wine offers all those tertiary aromas that makes fans of classic Rioja swoon (leather, faded roses, a faint toasty character). We leave quite pleased.

Next up is Sierra Cantabria, operated by the fifth generation of the Eguren family. After touring the family’s stunning Viñedos de Páganos property in the town of Páganos, where the Egurens are also planning to build a hotel and restaurant overlooking the La Nieta vineyard, we head to San Vicente de la Sonsierra to see the group’s Señorío de San Vicente bodgea and taste a selection of all of the family’s properties.

I’ve always liked the Sierra Cantabria line, the group’s classic brand, and I happen to love their most recent Gran Reserva release, from the 2001 vintage. I am not thinking that our group will unanimously swoon over their modern lineup, since I know that there are more than a few in our group who might find the style of these wines a little jacked up for Rioja.

But as we taste, eyebrows raise, including mine. A barrel sample of the 2005 Sierra Cantabria Cuveé Especial (6 months in combination of French and American oak, followed by 4 months in new French oak barrels), which our host José Manuel Azofra calls a transition our traditional wines to our terroir wines, has coffee, smoked meaty, licorice, minerally character with lots of perfume–all of which might sound a little an odd combo or how a nightmare date would smell–but I really liked this wine. A lot.

The 2005 San Vicente, 100% Tempranillo Peludo from a single 26 hectare plot in the Sonsierra zone of Rioja Alavesa, has just an incredible nose. Wow. Herbal notes, again licorice. Some might find the pronounced ripeness, even sweetness, of this wine a little much, but this is by far the best San Vicente I have tasted to date.

And then there’s the 2005 El Puntido from the aforementioned Viñedos de Páganos, a wine with a little less sweetness on the palate than the San Vicente, spicy, tannic, with high fruit notes (like an underripe black plum?); the 2006 Finca El Bosque, super-floral and perfumed; and the 2005 Amancio, with aromas of black fruit, violets and super, super-ripe fruit and ripe tannins on the palate.

It’s a sign of the style that predominates here that the bathrooms off the tasting room at Señorío de San Vicente have available little plastic packets with single-use toothbrushes and toothpaste inside them, so that tasters can brush off all that extracted pigment before moving on to their next appointment.

These wines are not for everyone (it’s not just style we’re talking here; the wines at the higher end are very expensive). But they are stunning: expressive, complex, and, yes, site-specific. It may be a little unwise to drink one of these wines before sitting for a color portrait, but man, they’ve got some life in them.

Tuesday, September 9, 2008

Into the Upper Ebro Basin

To enter Rioja by car from the northwest, there are two ways you can go: the A-68 (an autopista, or expressway, a toll road), which passes just below an enormous hilltop statue of San Felices (patron Saint of Haro and guardian of the vineyards) before dipping into the Ebro Valley; or, the N-124 (a carretera nacional, or highway), which follows the course of the Rio Ebro towards a narrow gorge called the Conchas de Haro before plunging into a tunnel hollowed out through the limestone massif that forms Rioja’s “northern wall,” as RODA’s Agustín Santolaya calls the region’s chain of northern sierras.

Both are dramatic ways to see Rioja for the first time.

One minute you’re driving through a landscape of wheat fields and forests under cloudy skies fed by the Atlantic Ocean, and then, almost before you can blink, boom!: You’re under blue Mediterranean skies gawking at a stunning panorama of almost nothing but vineyards stretching down into the upper Ebro basin as far as the eye can see.

Tondonia
Our first visit, 10:30 a.m. In retrospect, I wish we had scheduled this visit a little later in the week. This is the visit most anticipated by our group, and it’s over way too fast. Bodegas R. López de Heredia Viña Tondonia, where everything is done more or less the same way it has been for decades, is presently in the midst of a great flowering of recognition and praise, particularly among journalists and sommeliers.

Winemaker Mercedes López de Heredia recognizes me from last year’s interview and I’m quite flattered. Our tasting takes place in the bodega’s cobweb-strewn 19th century bottle cemetery. The whites, all Gran Reservas and all from the Tondonia vineyard, are all astonishing and change in the glass as we taste.

“We can guess, based on the weather conditions, tasting the wine as it ages in the barrel, how a wine will develop in the bottle,” Mercedes tells us. “But for the most part, we don’t know. It’s a mystery.”

The 1970 Blanco has searing acidity and shows remarkable potential to age even more. The 1976 is the most developed of the bunch; its aromas sweet and seductive, a little reminiscent of agua de panela, a raw sugar cane-based hot beverage popular among Colombia’s working class. Twenty minutes later the ‘76 smells like toffee. Remarkable. The 1964 is somewhere in between the ‘70 and ‘76: still very much alive but with all the hallmarks of graceful aging. The 1981, the bodega’s most recent Gran Reserva release, is a little tight at first, and seems positively childish compared to the others. Never thought I’d call a wine from 1981 young.

Viña Real
CVNE has a trifecta of killer properties in Rioja. Imperial is based in Haro, is made entirely from Rioja Alta fruit, and is the most classically styled of the three labels. Viña Real is all Alavesa fruit and comes from one of the region’s most impressive wineries, a gravity-fed, amphitheater-like bodega with barrels rooms that were excavated deep inside the sandstone mountain. And then there is Contino, a terrific single-estate property in nearby Laserna managed by the affable Jesus Madrazo.

In our visit to Viña Real, hosted by José Luis Ripa, we taste wines from all three bodegas. The 2005 Viña Real Crianza has pretty strawberry fruit and a licorice/tar-like spicy mineral character on the nose. The 2001 Viña Real Reserva has aromas of sweet red fruit, moderate alcohol levels considering the ripeness of the year, and excellent length. The Contino 2004 Reserva, with a high proportion of Graciano, has great aromatic complexity on the nose (along with a noticeable whiff of alcohol, which I hadn’t noticed in Reserva’s from earlier vintages). My favorite of the bunch is the 2001 Imperial Reserva, with focused but subdued fruit, a small dose of tobacco pouch-like earthiness, and excellent balance.

Elena Adell, winemaker at Bodegas Juan Alcorta in Logroño.

My colleague Kelly Bucher alerted me to an interesting article that appeared last week in the Wall Street Journal. Entitled “The Ladies of Spain,” the piece profiles the growing preponderance of female winemakers and bodega proprietors in Spain, particularly true in the D.O. of Rías Baixas, located along Spain’s NW coast and famous for its fish and shellfish-friendly white wines based on the Albariño grape variety. According the article, women now run over half of the region’s 198 wineries.

“In famous regions like Rioja or Ribera del Duero,” one winemaker says, “Office politics are almost as important as talent, so you have to fight the old guard. In Rías Baixas everyone is young and open to change.”

Rías Baixas indeed has a very impressive record, but the story in Rioja is not so cut and dry.

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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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