Blame it on Rioja

Miguel Angel de Gregorio standing in his El Calvario vineyard near the town of Briones, Spain, September 11, 2007. Briones visible in the background. Photo: John Barkley.

My respect for film and video directors, scriptwriters, producers, etc., jumped a hundred-fold this winter as found myself neck deep in the tedious, time-consuming but ultimately extraordinarily gratifying work of piecing together the two-hour educational documentary tentatively titled, “Magic at the Limits of Viticulture,” a collaboration between D.O.Ca. Rioja and the Culinary Institute of America Greystone scheduled for a DVD release later this year.

In upcoming posts I will go into more detail about each stage of the production, bringing us up to where we are now. It was completely new territory for me and an object lesson in the importance of breaking down all of the myriad tasks involved into little pieces, as opposed to looking at it as a whole and getting buried under the weight of trying to do too much at once. I have the great luxury of working with an incredible team at Vibrant Rioja and CIA Greystone; another lesson was learning how to ask for help.

Why “Magic at the Limits of Viticulture”?

Well, as I said, it’s a working title, and I’m nervous about using the word “magic” for fear of sounding too new-agey or like too much like we’re making a hard sell (although they have been very hands-off up to now, the project is financed by the region itself), but there are reasons behind it.

As I was reviewing all 30 hours video and looking over two binders of transcripts in December and January, it became clear to me that we had on our hands some really amazing material, and that in that material, there emerged a handful of captured moments that would profoundly affect how I conceptualized the organization of the story.

One of those moments came on day two, in a vineyard outside Briones call El Calvario, with Finca Allende proprietor and winemaker Miguel Angel de Gregorio. No matter how you feel about his wines, the man brings so much passion and respect to his work–for wine, terrior, vines, Rioja–it’s infectious. I remember that when we closed the interview, I turned around, clenched one fist and whispered to myself “yes!” because I knew we had just captured something special. My colleagues, none of whom speaks enough Spanish to understand what had just transpired, we unphased. “You’ll see,” I told them.

Spain has almost 70 different Denomaciones de Origen, what does Rioja have that no one else has?

That’s one of the questions I asked Miguel Angel de Gregorio. Here’s my translation of his response.

Uy! Tantas cosas. Rioja es mágica….

Uy! So many things. Rioja is magic. Rioja is unique and inimitable, first, because of the richness and diversity of its terroirs.

No other area in Spain has such a rich endowment of terroirs: diverse soil types, varied expositions to the sun, these mountainous elevations.

There is a second reason: we’re an Atlantic climate in a Mediterranean country, in a warm and dry country.

We have our share of water shortages; in a typical year, Briones will get about 600 liters of rainfall, which is less than half of what Bordeaux gets. This is why we still grow bush vines instead of training our vines higher.

At the same time, we’re influenced by winds coming in from the Atlantic. Ours is one of those climates at the limits of the viticulture. Go 10 to 15 kilometers beyond this vineyard, and vines won’t ripen, they cannot ripen. We’ve already reached the limit, that limit where you’ll find all the great wine-producing areas of the world: Alsace, Bordeaux, Burgundy, Piedmont. They’re all found in marginal climates, where vineyards almost shouldn’t exist. But this is where you find aromatic complexity, that complexity of elements in perfect alignment, where vineyards using the same grape variety are nevertheless unique and unrepeatable.

Stay tuned for more excerpted interviews.

CLASSIC COMBINATION: Chuletillas de cordero asadas (Grilled baby lamb chops), piquillo peppers, and fries, taken at Posada Mayor de Migueloa, Laguardia, Spain, September 9, 2007.  Photo: Jon Stamell.

It’s that time of year when one of viticulture’s most bracing demands comes a-callin’: the winter pruning of the vines.  By clipping the canes of each plant after the vines have shut down for the winter, a wine grower can reduce the quantity of fruiting buds and, therefore, improve the quality of the buds that eventually flower and bear fruit later in the season.

In Western Europe, the practice of grilling meat over the smoldering embers of vine clippings dates back several thousand years. In Rioja, the ancient practice of cooking meat over sarmientos in fact came to define the regional cuisine, and today traditional asadores, restaurants specializing in grilled meat, are still everywhere, thriving even as edgier cooking has made its way into the valley.

At the same time, Rioja’s cuisine helped to shape the evolution of its wine.  John Radford points out in Wines of Rioja that, even if it were possible, it’s unlikely that a red wine like Rioja would have fared very well along the seafood-rich estuaries of coastal Galicia. In other words, razor clams and sea scallops called out for high-acid, aromatic whites (i.e., Rias  Baixas, Ribeiro, Valdeorras); in Rioja, grilled baby lamb chops, or chuletillas de cordero, called out for something quite different.

And speaking of lamb chops, a reader named Marco Romano left a comment on one of my most recent posts and confessed that “Rioja is the wine that turned me into a lover of wine with food. Grilled lamb chops marinated in olive oil, garlic, pimenton, cumin and arbol chilies over charcoal with a Rioja reserva. Ah…”

Of course, I immediately asked for a recipe, and he quickly complied.

As for the grape vines, well, that’s the hard part.  A 2006 Wine News article on cooking with vines, written by Carole Kotkin, suggested contacting Kalmazoo Outdoor Gourmet, which sells grape vine chips, although I took a look at the website, and “grape vines” appears to be missing from the order form, even though it’s mentioned as an option on the product list. A phone call is definitely in order.

Or you can do what I plan to do next week, after I get back from Napa: call your nearest winery.

Grilled Marinated Lamb Chops
Recipe submitted by Marco Romano
4 loin chops, or 8 baby loin chops (chuletillas), if you want to get really authentic
1/4 cup olive oil
1 tsp. sherry vinegar
3 cloves roasted or raw minced garlic
1 tsp+ pimenton
1 tsp+ ground cumin
Ground arbol chilies* to taste
Salt & pepper

Mix the oil and vinegar with the garlic and spices, and marinate lamb for 2-4 hrs. at room temperature. Grill over hardwood in an outdoor pit.**

Serves Two
Wine Pairing Suggestions: Mr. Romano recommends the following Reservas

Lopez de Heredia “Vina Tondonia”
Muga “Seleccion Especial”
Contino
CVNE
Sierra Cantabria
Marques de Murrieta
Monte Real
Rioja Alta
Vina Real

*Chiles de Arbol, usually sold whole, are available at Latin markets across the country and at select Whole Foods.

**A good substitute for vine chips would be chips of some easier to find fruit woods: apple, apricot, cherry, nectarine, or peach.  Check out barbecuewood.com or kalamazogourmet.com.  I must confess that I have never cooked with wood before, but the three websites linked in this post seem to have enough information to steer us in the right direction. Still, proceed with caution.

RIOJA MASTER CLASS: Chad Wilmouth of the Culinary Institute of America Greystone, left, records Jorge Muga’s introduction to the topography, soils, and microclimates of Rioja, on a roadside overlooking the Ebro valley near the town of Villalba de Rioja, Spain, September 10, 2007. The narrow gorges that demarcate the northwestern limit of Rioja viticulture, Las Conchas de Haro, are visible in the background. Photo: Jon Stamell.

It’s been really thrilling going through all of the footage John Barkley and Chad Wilmouth recorded while we were in Rioja last September; since I was always busy interviewing, I rarely took notes and felt afterwards somewhat detached from the material, that is, until I got a hold of all the interviews, in their entirety, in a series of DVDs John handed me in mid-December.

One of the most impressive and certainly the most comprehensive of those interviews was the interview, or rather series of interviews, I had with Bodegas Muga winemaker Jorge Muga. As I was taking notes watching the footage, I ended up transcribing maybe 75% to 80% of his comments, so wide in scope were the topics he covered, so detailed and easy to comprehend were the things he said. And while his focus was primarily on his family’s vineyards and his bodega’s wines, Mr. Muga had also a lot to say about the region as a single entity, as well as the soil and microclimatic variations of its constituent parts. I can’t wait to see it all integrated into the final DVD.

In the meantime, I finally got around to editing some of the audio that Chris Fleming made available to me over the summer, including over two hours of his own interview with Jorge Muga, discovering in the process that many of the topics covered in the DVD interviews are also dealt with in depth in the audio Chris captured at Bodegas Muga last spring. I remember Chris telling me how impressed he was with Sr Muga’s presentation, calling it “a master class in the viticulture of Rioja,” so it seems appropriate that we should begin with him.

Jorge Muga’s edited comments, tied together with some of my own brief commentary, comprise the first edition of the Rioja Podcast, linked below. I hope you find it worthwhile.

 

 Rioja Podcast 1: Jorge Muga at the Frontiers of Rioja: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download (98)

In the vineyards with Marcos Eguren, September 13, 2007. Photo: Jon Stamell.

ADM: Where are we now?

ME: Right now we are in Viñedos de Páganos. Our group has three bodegas in Rioja, Sierra Cantabria, Señorío de San Vicente and Viñedos de Paganos; one bodega in Toro, Numathia Termes; and one bodega that makes vino de la mesa (table wine), the one right behind us, Dominio de Eguren.

ADM: And what does this vineyard, this part of Rioja, have that makes it special?

ME: At Viñedos de Paganos, where we are right now, we make two wines, one of which is El Puntido from this parcel [gesturing over his right shoulder]. This parcel is 25 hectares and is a vineyard planted 75 years ago. In 2001 we decided to make one wine specifically from this vineyard, a site we had been eying for many years.

(more…)

Tuesday, September 11, 2007

Why are there so many fiestas going on right now?

Yesterday, with Agustín Santolaya of RODA, we drove through Villalba de Rioja, and it looked as if the entire pueblo, populated almost exclusively by cosecheros (grape growers) according to Agustín, was in the main square drinking white wine out of plastic cups, blocking the way through. (One of them kept signaling to us to join the merriment, and believe me, if our schedule weren’t so damn brutal, I would have insisted that we do stop, but that story will have to wait for another day.)

And then today, on the way back from an interview with Ivan Alberdi of Bodegas Benjamin Romeo in San Vicente de la Sonsierra, we found ourselves smack in the center of an honest to goodness encierro, a running of the bulls. Or in this case, a running of the bull (singular). Seems they had six, and released them one by one, sending all six out at the end, something we didn’t stick around for.

Alfredo, our driver/my wingman/(or as Kelly calls him) my new BFF, explained: Fiestas take place just before harvest not only because there’s a lull before the crush but also because typically fiestas provide an opportunity for grape growers to lavish food and drink upon neighbors they’ll soon call on for help with the harvest.

Of course, ideally there is some lag between party and picking. Can you imagine waking up from a solid week of overindulgence to your neighbor pounding on the door with news that the grapes have to come in, could you please lend a hand? I am craving a double espresso just thinking about it.

Photo: San Vicente de la Sonsierra, Tuesday, September 11, 2007.

Jane Brody’s “Personal Health” column in today’s New York Times, “You are also what you drink,” got me thinking about a conversation I had yesterday with food and wine journalist Gerry Dawes about rising alcohol levels in contemporary wines.

“Alcohol,” Ms. Brody writes, summarizing a recent study on beverages and health conducted by a panel of nutritionists and health experts, “is a classic case of ‘a little may be better than none but a lot is worse than a little.’ Moderate consumption — one drink a day for women and two for men — has been linked in many large, long-term studies to lower mortality rates, especially from heart attacks and strokes, and may also lower the risk of Type 2 diabetes and gallstones.” Moderate-to-heavy drinking, unsurprisingly, is a different thing altogether. (more…)

Robert Parker’s Wine Advocate recently released its first issue (#169, Feb. 28. 2007) devoted exclusively to Spanish and Portuguese wines since 2005–and the first with Jay Miller presiding over Spanish wine instead of Mr. Parker–and the results are impressive, if not entirely surprising. Five Spanish wines scored perfect 100s, all from the now buzz-heavy 2004 vintage, including two Riojas, “Viña el Pisón” 2004 from Bodegas y Viñedos Artadi and Benjamin Romeo’s 2004 “Contador.” (more…)