Blame it on Rioja

“Vendimia con comportones en 1920.” Photo courtesy Bodegas R. López de Heredia Viña Tondonia.

In just a matter of days, CIAprochef.com, the Culinary Institute of America’s online home, will launch “Rioja: Tradition and Innovation at the Frontiers of Flavor,” a webcast/DVD that represents the culmination of nearly fourteen months of collaborative effort between CIA Greystone in Napa and Vibrant Rioja, and a production to which I am proud to say I made a significant creative contribution.

One of the most painstaking but ultimately most rewarding tasks I was assigned was the sourcing of still images to use as cutaways during the voice-over narration between interviews. Countless individuals, governmental organizations, and bodegas sent us a treasure trove of visual material, enough to turn our humble two-hour production into a multi-part Ken Burns-style video document if we had the time and resources to do so.

As befits a wine region with such a storied past, the most compelling images were largely those captured long ago.

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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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September 14, 2007

A little bit more about the project we call CIA Rioja 2007:  Jon Stamell, who heads the Vibrant Rioja campaign, has long held that a close association with the Culinary Institute of America would be a good thing, as it would offer us great exposure to influential industry types, keep us plugged into the annual Worlds of Flavor conference in Napa, and would tie our own upward growth to the CIA’s rapidly expanding international programming and new media initiatives.

Part of the plan was to develop a DVD video on Rioja, an educational documentary that would be mailed to thousands of alumni and would also permanently reside on the CIA’s prochef.com website, as part of the ProChef Discover series.  At the same time, we would recruit five emerging sommeliers from around the country to join us on the trip, and try to see the story of the region unfold through their eyes, try to capture that discovery on film.

That meant simultaneously creating the story—which is to say, create the setting and narrative organization of a story that would ultimately tell itself—and choosing the sommeliers, both duties I enthusiastically took on.

Working closely with freelancer Chris Fleming, a passionate and knowledgeable Riojaphile and the DVD’s technical adviser, I developed the story’s themes and cast of characters, submitted a schedule request for the week of shooting, and began compiling questions I would ask each winemaker or chef.  At the same time, I began the recruitment process for the sommeliers, which meant essentially checking in with Master Sommeliers Fred Dame, Larry Stone, and Roger Dagorn, and putting together a list of candidates, each of whom I would call in order to verify availability and try to get a sense of his or her personality. 

Early in the summer, Jon asked Kelly Bucher, who works for CRT/tanaka (the agency that administers the campaign) to work with me on these projects, and once the sommelier selections were made, she basically took over the logistics and liaison duties as they related to the sommeliers while I concentrated on the DVD script.

Kelly and I arrived a few days before shooting in order to check in with the Consejo Regulador of D.O.Ca. Rioja (our client) and visit as many bodegas as possible in order to let them know what to expect.

What I did not account for was that Haro would be deep in fiestas on the day we planned to shoot here, and that the shooting schedule I had created would lie somewhere between overly ambitious and utterly insane.

Stay tuned for more……

Saturday, September 8, 9:48am

Outside my window at Hotel Los Agustinos in Haro, Rioja’s unofficial wine capital, the sounds of a live marching band are coming closer with each passing moment, and I am wondering if they are headed straight into Habitación 229, where I sit typing. Every thirty seconds or so, my body jumps a little from the mid-range boom of a solitary firework, which is obviously very close but hidden from view.

Saturday, September 8, 10:05am

Suddenly everything’s quiet again, except for the whooshing sound of a maid’s vacuum two floors below. I walk over to my night stand, where I placed the little pamphlet just before retiring last night. The cover reads “Haro. Del 7 al 11 de septiembre de 2007: Fiestas en Honor a Ntra. Sra. la Virgen de la Vega.” A quick glance at Saturday’s activities and it all makes sense: A solemn Mass at the Basílica de la Vega just down the street at 10am, preceded by “Alegres Dianas por la Banda Municipal de Música.”

Welcome to Haro, La Rioja, Spain, a lovely little town in the throes of Virgen de la Vega fever. I know I should look up the Patrona of Haro, found out her origins, where she might have appeared or which miracles are attributed to her, try to appear cultured, but my research card is full. It’s finally here, and it’s about to kick into full throttle: CIA Rioja 2007.

A big part of my job this year as a freelance consultant to, and spokesperson for, the U.S. Vibrant Rioja campaign–and a huge chunk of my “free time” away from Chanterelle since May–has been to prepare for this moment, and the real fun’s about to begin. Two groups are set to arrive in Rioja this weekend, one, a production crew from the Culinary Institute of America’s Greystone campus in St. Helena, here to film a educational DVD video on the region; the other, a group five of America’s best up-and-coming sommeliers, here to visit a killer line-up of wineries and restaurants. Although the two groups are traveling separately, periodically our paths will cross, and the production crew, led by the James Beard Award-winning producer/director John Barkley, will check in with the sommeliers to hear about their experiences, making our project very much about discovering Rioja through the eyes of a young American wine professional.

Heading out to the Bilbao airport to pick up the production crew right now as a matter of fact, hitting the ground running shortly thereafter in Bilbao proper for a little environmental shooting. More to come……

Photo: Lunch at Mayor de Migueloa in Laguardia, Rioja Alavesa, Friday, September 7, 2007.

The lovely and eminently capable ladies over at Vibrant Rioja set up a Rosado tasting last night in the outdoor garden of Ono at the base of the Hotel Gansevoort, renting a little self-contained cabana and inviting a group of young journalists–one guy and six very attractive women–to taste through a selection of 2006 Rioja Rosados while tapeando un poco among platters of sushi, duck spring rolls, crispy risotto balls with porcini and white truffle oil, chicken satay with peanut sauce, and coconut shrimp.

I’ve always been a sucker for rosé, not the insipid sweet stuff that’s made gazillions for Beringer since the 1980s, but the pink juice with character: Bandol, Champagne rosé, Franciacorta rosato, and Rioja rosado. The best rosés have exuberant aromas of red berry fruit–think cherry and strawberry–but are not the least bit sweet. A clean, almost citrusy finish is what you want to quench your thirst on a hot day, maybe just a touch of what wine nerds like to call “grip”, which is to say, textural astringency that grounds the wine and makes it friendly with food, the result of minimal skin contact the grape juice–known as must–has with its red skins.

And then there’s the simple joy of merely looking at the wine in your glass–that beautiful color reminiscent of the first warm day of the year, when, blessedly, the women of New York city put away their overcoats and bust out those flowing dresses made of soft and colorful fabric, making summer in the East Village much more tolerable.

The wines we tasted last night are as follows (with approximate retail price):

Light and easy drinking - the summer sippin’ wine:

• Marqués de Cáceres 2006 Rosado ($9.99) This has the cleanest style - simple and thirst quenching, the aperitif Rioja Rosado

Fruity, fragrant and full - wines for an outdoor summer seduction:

• Faustino V 2005 Rosado ($8.99) - Bursting with gobs of cherry fruit, the favorite rosado of wine writer and Rioja expert John Radford.
• CVNE 2006 Rosado ($12.99) - Great color, mucho cherry as well, one of the crowd’s favorites.

Lean and herbaceous - wines that call out for food:

• Muga 2006 Rosado ($10.99) - The only wine with a white grape–Viura–in the blend. Most complex of the bunch. With a faded salmon color the Spanish call ojo de gallo (eye of the rooster).
• El Coto 2006 Rosado ($9.99) - Firm and “gastronomic”, as a Spaniard would say, another crowd favorite.

Foods to eat with Rosado: Paella, grilled salmon, cherry tomato salad with goat cheese, grilled razor clams with garlic and lemon, Peking duck, shrimp cocktail, pulled pork sandwich, fried clams.

A note on vintages: The 2006 bottlings for all of these wines will soon be on the market, if they are not already. Rioja Rosado–with the notable exception of the complex and delicious Lopez de Heredia Vina Tondonia Rosado, whose latest release is a 1995–is meant to be drunk young, so look for the ’06’s. The Faustino 2006 was not available for this tasting, and the ‘05 showed some signs of fading.

Welcome to BLAME IT ON RIOJA, a new wine blog dedicated exclusively to Spain’s premier quality winemaking region—its products, personalities, landscape, and history.

Uncork a Rioja crianza, let the fruity and seductive Tempranillo grape nudge your senses, and join me on an insider’s tour of one of the world’s richest epicurean enclaves.

Commisioned by the region itself, BLAME IT ON RIOJA is nevertheless a highly personal enterprise: a practical guide to a region in flux as seen through the eyes of a working sommelier, opinionated journalist, and unreformed lifetime Riojaphile.

About that last part, allow me a moment to elaborate.

I’ve nurtured an obsession for Rioja wines since my days as a student in Madrid in the early 1990s, but it took an impromptu detour to Rioja in the late 1990s to seal the deal.

Over a plate of wild partridge and a glass of young Rioja in the summer of 1998, my food and wine worldview would be rocked forever. (more…)