Blame it on Rioja

Anticuchos of octopus with herbed mashed potato, Chimichurri sauce, and ají panca, at Restaurant La Mar, San Francisco.

If you had told me last winter that one of my favorite dining experiences of the coming year would take place in a restaurant renowned for its ceviche, I would have wondered what you had been smoking. (Something aboout the washed-out white color over-citrused fish takes on. )

Can’t say that I crave ceviche now, but ho! did I love La Mar Cebicheria*, a Peruvian newcomer along San Francisco’s Embarcadero.  The California halibut ceviche, the clásico, was pristine and refreshing and was a nice match for one of the Riojas I had brought along to this working press lunch (and which wine director, Emmanuel Kemiji MS, very kindly let me open), a classic white I had never heard of before, Viña Valoria Blanco Crianza 2000.

Although the wine was a little tight at first, this classic white Rioja, aged in  neutral oak for at least a two to three years, as far as I can tell, was quite a nice surprise as it opened up.

Same went for the wine’s compatability with our second course, Causa Limena: Dungeness crab with avocado pureé, cherry tomatoes, ají amarillo (yellow chili pepper), huanacaína sauce (a kind of cheesy/creamy ají amarillo dressing), and basil cilantro oil.

Then onto octopus skewers (anticuchos) over herbed mashed potatoes with red chilis and Chimichurri, which were so good that they very nearly made me forget that I was working, so badly did I want to just reach out and grab ‘em two at a time between my knuckles.

Similarly up my alley was a Peruvian stir-fry called Lomo Saltado: a bowl full of some of life’s most wonderous things–beef tenderloin, french fries, red onions, tomatoes, rice, cilantro, garlic, soy sauce, and that tasty little yellow rascal again, the ají amarillo. Ay!

In addition to the Viña Valoria Blanco, available at K&L Wine Merchants in San Francisco for $18.99, we also brought along a Muga 2007 Rosado (always a food-friendly choice, $12), and a Marqués de Vargas 2004 Reserva, a great deal at $24 retail (and perfect with my blissed out beef experience).  From the ever solicitous Emmanuel Kimiji MS, we ordered an over-the-top modern-styled, extremely value-oriented bottle of La Montesa, a newcomer from the esteemed Rioja Baja bodega of Palacios Remondo, as in Álvaro Palacios, $36 on the list, about half that in a store, $15.99 at PJ Wine in New York, for example.

*Until someone explains to me satisfactorily why it’s ‘cebiche’ and not ‘ceviche,’ I will continue to use the “v.”

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.

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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In a brilliant marketing move that will surely leave lots of folks wondering why they didn’t think of it themselves, California’s Concannon Vineyards recently unveiled two Recession Reds (Merlot and Cabernet Sauvignon) and a Recession White (Chardonnay), low-cost wines with a suggested retail price of $5. According to SlashFood.com’s Annie Scott, the 2006 Merlot is “delicious…my new favorite wine.”

Now, in all fairness I haven’t tasted the wine yet, and not ever wanting to tarnish anyone’s vision of a wine experience, which is governed by many factors not having anything to do with wine (just think of Jessi Coulter’s line from ‘Why You Been Gone So Long?” which some of you might recall was on my T-Day Mix: “I could drink a fifth of Thunderbird, write myself a sad song….”), I do not want to question Ms. Scott’s judgment.

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Only three more days till the eating event of the year, and like lots of folks this fall, I’m staying put, cooking with Lily and Gail across the river in Williamsburg, Brooklyn, with Mom and Dad coming in Thursday morning for the day’s festivities, plus an extended weekend involving a good amount of walking and probably more eating and drinking.

But let’s focus here. Thanksgiving.

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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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