Blame it on Rioja

I have long been a fan of Loriñon, the workhorse brand of Bodegas Breton in Rioja Alta, whose winemaker, José María Ryan, oversaw dramatic innovations at Viña Real across the river in the early part of the decade. But only recently have I come around to tasting their whites, and though I have never been especially fond of barrel-fermented modern white Rioja, I quite like this subtle incarnation made from 100% Viura, fermented in American oak, and kept on its lees for four months before bottling.

If the Sierra Cantabria group’s Organza blanco is Rioja’s buttery answer to oaky Napa Valley Chardonnay, I’d say that Loriñon is Rioja’s ‘mountain fruit.’ Lean and lemony, with just a hint of oaky/yeasty richness, Loriñon’s barrel-fermented Rioja blanco offers more complexity and weight than Rioja’s neutral stainless steel-fermented sippers without sacrificing food-loving acidity.

And speaking of food, here is the recipe for a pintxo (tapa) whose compatibility with this wine I can personally vouch for: The Bergara Cocktail from the great Bar Bergara in San Sebastián, whose chef/owner Patxi Bergara paid a special visit to the Napa Valley this week for the Worlds of Flavor Conference at the Culinary Institute of America at Greystone in St. Helena. I’m out here this week to help coordinate the Rioja campaign’s participation (promotion of our collaborative DVD, a series of themed tastings, plus two seminars led by wine badass Doug Frost MS MW), and it just so happened that we were pouring the Loriñon blanco last night when Señor Bergara arrived at our booth with several trays of the Bergara cocktail.

Let’s just say that this particular moment called for a very brief work stoppage in the interest of research.

Bergara Cocktail

40 slices of pineapple in syrup
40 boiled king prawns
10 apples
1 med. jar Mayonnaise, 1 med. bottle Ketchup, 1 small bottle Tabasco
3 small tins trout roe
1 Pullman loaf

1. Combine Mayonnaise, Ketchup and Tabasco in a large mixing bowl and stir until well integrated. Reserve.
2. Dice pineapples, king prawns, and apples, and fold into mixing bowl with reserved sauce. Keep mixture chilled until an hour before serving.
3. Using a small cookie cutter, cut four small disks out of each slice of Pullman loaf and, using a baking sheet, toast both sides under the broiler.
5. Scoop fruit and prawn mixture onto each toasted disk of bread, just enough to cover.
6. Garnish with small dollop of trout roe.
Makes 80 pintxos.

Bodegas Bretón Loriñon barrel-fermented Rioja blanco 2006 is $11.99/bottle at Winerz.com

Wednesday, September 10, 2008

After yesterday’s light but persistent rain, we are all happy to see sunny skies again today. From what I am gathering, a little rain this time of year is not catastrophic, especially this year, which was quite dry. Harvest is still two weeks away for most vineyards in Rioja Alta and Rioja Alavesa, so there is time for the soils to bounce back, although I keep thinking about what Jorge Muga said about his bodega’s high elevation clay soils during our interview last year.

“The problem with clay is that it keeps the water too much. If it rains a lot in September, forget about the harvest.”

Marqués de Vargas
Our first stop, a single estate winery just outside of Logroño, in an area known as Los Tres Marqueses, for the large holdings of land here originally held by three distinguished marquis: Vargas, Murrieta, and Romeral (the last property of which I am told has been broken up, though I have noticed that the brand lives on, bottled by the bodega giant, AGE). On our brief tour of the 70-hectare Marqués de Vargas property, in fact, I notice that Marqués de Murrieta is right next door.

Although the inclusion of Cabernet Sauvignon in blends here is not advertised (it is referred to in materials here as “other varieties”), it’s abundantly clear that the property has considerable “grandfathered” plantings of that French variety.

I have tasted Vargas’ wines before and have quite liked them, but today I am still quite taken aback by their wines’ high level of quality and distinctiveness. Careful grape selection and handling, along with spare-no-expense winemaking, are likely the keys here to the wines’ deliciousness, but so too is the interesting fact that the winery uses a lot of Russian oak.

I was a little at a loss to describe the aromas of the one wine here that uses all new Russian oak, the 2004 Marqués de Vargas Reserva Privada–aromatic green herbs? a pencil lead-like minerality?–but I do know that I really liked it. Winemaker Javier Pérez Ruiz de Vergara called the aromas of Russian oak floral and feminine, saying that women tend to like this wine. David Rosengarten, who said that he picked up a lot of vegetal character in the wine, guessed that it had more to do with the 20% Cabernet Sauvignon in the blend.

Dinastía Vivanco
For years, the wines of this bodega, based in the Rioja Alta town of Briones and now managed by the Vivanco family’s fourth generation, played second fiddle to its terrific–and, I might add, non-self promotional–Museum of Wine Culture. I am pleased to say that this is no longer the case.

Winemaker Rafael Vivanco, who graduated two years ago with a Diplôme National d’Oenologie from the University of Bordeaux, is as kind and unassuming as he is influential. He’s also recently made some killer wines. I’d like to spend some more time in the future writing about the entire lineup we tasted today, a portfolio slowly making inroads in the American market, but for now, as an expample, let me say that Rafael’s latest blanco release, from the 2006 vintage, took everyone by surprise. Sourced from the best Viura plantings Rafael could find and kept on its lees for several months, the 2006 Dinastía Vivanco Blanco is as vibrant a white wine you’re likely to find anywhere in Rioja. With correct tree-fruit aromatics and a hint of citrus on the nose, the wine gives no hint to the mouth-watering acidity that hits the tongue on first taste.

“Other whites in Rioja are less acidic and focus more on the oak,” Rafael says. “Natural acidity is very important to me.”

Bodegas Franco-Españolas
Not so long ago, vineyards north of Logroño crept right up to the Ebro River, a stone’s throw from the city center. That was exactly the case at this venerable old bodega just down the street from the town’s former slaughterhouse. Inside you’ll find old photographs of the vineyards that once grew behind the bodega’s late 19th century structure, where now apartment buildings stand.

And speaking of photographs, found out today that back in the early 1950s, the city’s official photographer took images of Ernest Hemingway in front of this very bodega, while the author was traveling up to Pamplona in the company of bullfighter Antonio Ordóñez. Lost for half a century, these images were recently discovered by the photographer’s son in his father’s cellar, and he generously handed them over to the winery. The one that appears here shows Hemingway arm in arm with one the bodega’s floor sweepers. Story goes that the American writer was quite charmed that this gentleman happened to be wearing a Hawaiian shirt.

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.

Every so often I come across a blog that’s such a joy to read, so lovely to gaze upon, that I find myself lost in the minutiae of things I had no idea I gave a damn about–the cyber-version of a really good, really random New Yorker magazine.

Last night I checked out a blog called Fedification, written by former Martha Stewart Living producer Mari Uyehara, who’s traveling around Thailand for the next several months and has recently started sending tasty dispatches out into the ether, posts on mangosteens and kao soi (egg noodle curry soup) and the difficulty in getting a proper cocktail in Bangkok, accompanied by vibrant and, yes, sexy photographs of liquid refreshments, freshly ravaged fruit, and hot chili-speckled pools of curry-colored deliciousness.

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Had the privilege of enjoying ripe local tomatoes twice this past weekend, first at Chanterelle, where I had lunch with two friends on Saturday, and again last night at Dressler in Williamsburg, where giant tomato disks are stacked together with hunks of watermelon, a summer perennial that’s getting a lot of play these days on both restaurant menus and on the glossy pages of fancy food magazines.

The appearance of tomatoes in local markets (and of corn and peaches) defines late summer for a lot of folks like me, and like with every seasonal bounty, there is always a quest to see how many different ways we can use them at home.

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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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