Blame it on Rioja

The wine list at Rekondo, San Sebastián, September 17, 2007. Photo: Adrian Murcia.

Last week, a colleague of mine at Chanterelle, Gayle Dewindt–a biking Brooklynite most likely on a first-name basis with every purveyor of fine consumables in all five boroughs–brought into work a few slices of smoked duck breast from the Blue Ribbon Bakery Market, and shared it with the rest of the staff in between our first and second seating. It was so good, so perfectly seasoned, so satisfyingly smoky in a way that recalled both being inside Louie Mueller’s Barbecue in Taylor, Texas and smelling the first firewood smoke of the season in the autumns of my youth, that I did a little jig, a smoked duck gig.

Well that’s sort of how I felt this past September in San Sebastián when a very nice lady at Rekondo handed me the restaurant’s wine list. I had heard about this place from R. López de Heredia Viña Tondonia managing director María José López de Heredia, who told me last year that the restaurant carried vintages of her family’s wines that she herself did not have in her own bodega. I had also read about it in an article by Jancis Robinson and in another article written by Gerry Dawes, but nothing had prepared me for the moment when I would actually be holding the restaurant’s wine list in my hands.

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Rioja Superstar: Jesus Madrazo of Contino, September 14, 2007. Photo: John Barkley.

During our second hot air balloon flight over Rioja, when we were up higher than we had any damn right to be, I noticed our pilot Laureano turning his ear toward the sounds of unseen aircraft in the distance with a slightly worried expression on his face. I thought to myself, man, that would really suck if we get clipped by a plane right now.

Which made our visit to Bodegas Contino in Laserna, the first appointment on our docket after our early-morning, high-altitude brush with eternity, a particularly sweet reaffirmation of life.

It’s hard to think of a better way to celebrate life than raising a glass of Contino. Jesus Madrazo, winemaker at Contino and a member of the family that founded CVNE, Contino’s parent company, is one of Rioja’s unmitigated superstars, and his wines are spectacular.

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Sunday, September 9, 2007

Last night was the first team meeting that included all of the major players, held in a private room at Juan Nales’ Restaurante Las Duelas inside Hotel Los Agustinos. Ricardo Aguiriano, director of marketing at the Consejo Regulador de la Denominación de Origen Calificada de Rioja (CR), was there, along with Rebeca Gómez, head of international promotions for the CR; Tom Perry, head of the Rioja Exporters group; and, on our end, Jon Stamell, head of Vibrant Rioja campaign; Kelly Bucher of CRT/tanaka; John Barkley, associate director of strategic initiatives at CIA Greystone; Chad Wilmouth of CIA; and me.

It’s been crazy here in Haro, music and carrying on until the wee hours. Friday night, there was a wedding inside the hotel, in the courtyard below, and something that sounded like Iron Maiden coming from the town’s main square at about 2:00am, a bocadito of cacophony I found more amusing than obtrusive. I mean, who I am to complain? I am the interloper.

But the fiestas have meant that everything’s been closed since Friday afternoon, with nowhere to print and copy the schedules, except the front desk at our hotel, and that was like pulling teeth. One guy, a manager-type who looked and acted like he didn’t really like his job all that much, had warned me on Thursday night that they “were not set up to do big jobs.” And yesterday we exchanged words when I came down to pick up the schedules I had emailed down to a compliant receptionist a half hour earlier. “Remember what I told you?” he told me when I asked for the copies. That’s when I reminded him that we were bringing eleven people to this hotel and staying for six days, and that it was a little ridiculous that he was giving me a hard time over 70 sheets of paper. Ten minutes into our meeting, the schedules were delivered.

Today was a whirlwind day that began in Logroño, at the Fiesta de la Verdura, a festival that celebrates the harvest of all the killer fruits and vegetables that are cultivated in the region. It hasn’t been happening for all that long, according to Ricardo, and it’s sort of spin off of a major verdura fiesta that takes place in Calahorra further downriver, home to Chef Nino, who we are visiting later this week.

Today was set aside for exterior shots: bodegas facades, rivers, vineyards, etc. Man, it’s beautiful here. Temperature in the 70s, not a cloud in the sky, cool at night. In other words, perfect weather for the days leading up to the harvest. For the sake of the ’07 vintage (my vintage, in a way), I hope it stays this way.

Dinner at La Vieja Bodega in Casalrreina was very good. Three sommeliers arrived today, accompanied by the awesome Jose Guerra of Wines from Spain (ICEX): Skye LaTorre of A16 in San Francisco; Juan Gomez MS of the Breakers in Palm Beach Florida; and Jason Smith MS of Micheal Mina at the Bellagio in Las Vegas. They were a little beat after such a long travel day, but I liked their energy nevertheless. Good group so far.

Ángel Pérez Aguilar, the proprietor of La Vieja Bodega, opened the place just for us tonight, and he exhibited the kind of happiness in his life’s choices that I always dream about: he couldn’t take life in Madrid, and when he found this place, saw its underground cellar, well, he knew it was for him. He took us on a tour of those caves, showed us a wall of ancient bottles and pulled two 375ml bottles for us to taste, with barely legible labels that said: Monte Real, Blanco Semi-Dulce, 1954. Somewhat Sherry-like, with baked apple, faded floral, and hazelnutty aromas, the wine still had quite a lot of life. I never even knew such a wine existed here.

The UK’s Decanter Magazine, hands down the most lucid, comprehensive, and intellectually rigorous wine magazine in English, takes on Rioja Reservas from the complicated 2002 vintage in its most recent panel tasting (September 2007, pp. 77-80). Expectations were low; after picture-perfect ripening conditions in the now-heralded 2001 vintage, 2002 served the region of a cocktail of spring frosts and excessive summer rains that threatened flowering and hampered ideal ripening of the fruit. Nevertheless, the six-member tasting panel emerged “pleasantly surprised.”

As lead taster and Rioja expert John Radford puts it, with typically inventive prose, “There were no really great, head-bangingly, mind-bogglingly fantastic wines, like there would have been if this had been 2001, 2004, or 2005, but overall the quality and value for money are still there - as well as the harmony you look for in Rioja.”

To call itself a Reserva, a Rioja is required by law to age for at least three years at the bodega, including at least one year in Bourdeax-style, 225-liter oak barrels (the most palpable legacy of Rioja’s close historical connection with its northern neighbor).

“Reserva has always had the cachet of being the ‘gold standard’ in Rioja,” Radford writes, “Perhaps not the best wines, but the most reliable.”

“I love the iron fist in the velvet glove you get with really good reservas,” Ed Adams, another panelist, writes, in a phrase often used to describe Pomerol, “Acidity and tannin, but wrapped in soft, velvety fruit.”

The panel tasted 54 wines and, as is the case with all Decanter panels, rated the wines on a twenty-point scale that put them into one of five categories, one to five stars. Of those 54 wines, 28 merited *** (Recommended, 14.5-16.49 pts.), four got **** (Highly Recommended, 16.5-18.49 pts.), and two wines, Bodegas Baigorri and Marqués de Riscal, won ***** (Decanter Award, Outstanding).

How funny that the panel, which tastes wine “blind” (meaning that they are tasted without the panelists’ knowing what they are judging), should award its highest rating to two wines that not only represent two ends of the style spectrum (Baigorri, which the panel describes as “modern, clean, and attractive…well structured modern style”; and Riscal, with “soft, strawberry fruit with spice and cedar…acidity and tannin to last,” descriptors of the classic style), but also come from two of the highest profile, so-called architectural bodegas.

Nice to see two exemplars of the happy union of both style and substance.

Bodegas Baigorri

Marqués de Riscal

Apart from Violeta’s transfer to Williamsburg and some badly-needed friend and family summer reconnection/outdoor feasting, much of my time away from the restaurant lately has been spent working on a couple of Rioja-sponsored projects: a sommelier trip to the region and an educational DVD/webcast on Rioja, co-produced by the James Beard Award winning team at the Culinary Institute of America Greystone in Napa (about which projects, more in future posts).

John Barkley, a key member of that team, alerted me to the fact late last week that Pancho Campo of the Spanish Wine Academy, perhaps the world’s leading authority on the effects of global warming on the wine industry, would be visiting Greystone on Friday. We promptly made arrangements for an interview.

So, it was rather serendipitous that I should open my inbox today to find that my friend Valerie had sent me a link to an National Public Radio report on global warming and wine, which included Sr. Campo as a major source.

Besides being a good introduction to the subject, the piece also sheds some interesting light on the role of elevation in wine production, the realities of vintage variation in traditional French wine production, and the evolving tastes of the modern-day wine consumer.

Click here for a link.

On June 3, I finally got my wish to host a Sunday Salon at Chanterelle devoted entirely to the Spain, and I was blown away by the demand: we sold something like 80 seats before it even made it to the press, with around 60 folks on the waiting list. I mean, it’s not like tasting six wines and six cheeses in one of the most serene and beautiful dining rooms in the city for $55 is a hard sell, but still, I was flattered.

We started off with passed trays of food (serrano ham wrapped around Galia melon and mint; grilled shrimp with red pepper aioli; smoked trout “ceviche” on housemade chips) accompanied by glasses of Hidalgo “La Gitana” Manzanilla Sherry, that lean and almondy fino-style Sherry that screams out for food, one of the world’s best misunderstood wines. Some people loved it, others, I think, were a little confused at how I could profess my love to such a weird beverage.

Here is a list of our wine and cheese line-up, with my comments on the pairing in italics:

1. Tetilla (Pasteurized cow’s milk; Galicia) paired with Do Ferreiro Rebisaca 2005 Rías Baixas (made from the Treixadura and Albariño grapes, Galicia). This wine, one of many stunners brought in by importer Andre Tamers, was beautiful: with melon and citrus aromas and great acidity, which cut right through the fatty Tetilla.
2. Cabra Romero (Pasteurized goat’s milk; Murcia) with Ameztoi “Rubentis” Txakolina Rosado 2006 (Hondarrabi Zuri and Hondarrabi Beltza; País Vasco). Two unsual finds: the cheese is rather a nightmare to cut, covered as it is with endless slimy spears of rosemary, but quite lovely to eat; the wine has a beautiful color, a faint lemon/strawberry nose, and a grapefruit-like tartness. Together they worked well, aided by a little Star Thistle Honey from Colorado for sweet relief.
3. Garrotxa (Pasteurized goat’s milk; Catalunya) with R. López de Herredia Viña Tondonia Rioja Reserva Blanco 1989 (Viura and Malvasia; La Rioja) I have paired these two before, and it always seems to work. God, I love this wine. I think there were some in our (quite young) audience who didn’t get it, but I sure hope they do one day, it’s one of the region’s unique treasures: honeyed, nutty, citrusy, very unusual and heady in its subtle seductive power.
4. Mil Ovejas (Raw sheep’s milk; Extremadura) and Miguel Merino Rioja Reserva 2000 (Tempranillo and Graciano; La Rioja) Thanks to Max Schrem at Formaggio Essex for turning me onto this great Manchego-like cheese. Flavors of butter and herbs and faint citrus linger in the mouth long after you swallow it. The Merino Reserva was great, as always, with judicious oaky notes not getting in the way of a flavor that for me defines the entire country. Only caveat is that this wine needed decanting, as it was a little tight right out of the bottle. Its aromatics need some coaxing, which is to say, time and oxygen, perhaps a function of its vintage.
5. Uplands Farm Pleasant Ridge Reserve (Raw cow’s milk; Wisconsin) with Sandeman “Royal Corregidor” V.O.S. Oloroso Sherry NV (Palomino Fino and Pedro Ximénez, Andalucía). This crazy good aged Sherry is a match made in heaven for Gruyere-style, cooked-curd, pressed raw cow’s milk cheese, and Spain doesn’t make anything like it, so I turned to Wisconsin. Yum.
6. Monte Enebro (Pastuerized goat’s milk; Castilla-León) with Pedro Domecq “Venerable” V.O.R.S. PX Sherry (Pedro Ximénez; Andalucía) I sorta broke the bank with this very expensive aged PX Sherry but there was nothing we tasted that day to compare with the finesse and power of this miraculous pairing.

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.