Blame it on Rioja

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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Francis Paniego (top) at El Portal de Echuarren, Ezcaray, Spain, October 2005 (Photo: Daniel Hertzell); María José López de Heredia (bottom) at Bodegas R. López de Heredia, Haro, Spain, October 2005 (Photo: Eric Striffler.

If ever a moment illustrated the harmonious coexistence of tradition and modernity in Rioja, a phenomenon applicable to all of Spain really, it was my dinner at Francis Paniego’s El Portal de Echuarren with Bodegas R. López de Heredia Viña Tondonia managing director María José López de Heredia, while on a press trip to the region in May 2006.

Apart from finding Ms. López de Heredia exceedingly charming and passionate–and grappling, I must admit, with a profound sense of delirious incredulity that I should find myself in such exalted company–I was just mesmerized by how well her bodega’s wines went with Francis Paniego’s food.

Which is significant because here we were in Rioja’s ski vacation town of Ezcaray enjoying the food of the region’s most talented and celebrated practitioners of Spain’s cutting-edge Nueva Cocina, all the while drinking wines from a bodega that’s become an icon for classic winemaking in Spain.

Our whites that evening included the 1995 Viña Gravonia Blanco Reserva (100% Viura, aged for four years in American oak), the 1988 Viña Tondonia Blanco Reserva (15% Malvasia*, six years in oak), and the 1981 Viña Tondonia Blanco Gran Reserva (10 to 15% Malvasia, up to eight years in oak and another fifteen before release!).

The aromas of the ‘81 Tondonia Gran Reserva were heady and seductive, unlike anything being produced right now in Rioja–”honey, bitter almond, coconut, (petrol?), something tropical,” I wrote in my notes. The wine’s acidity was very much alive, a Grand Cru Chablis-like foil to the evening’s third course: a metallic, Belon-like oyster (I forgot to ask for the name) served with grilled melon and quash puree, and drizzled with almond cream.

But it was with the fourth course that the ‘81 Tondonia really showed it brilliance as a food wine: spears of white asparagus with a perrechico cream drizzled with extra virgin olive oil. Perrechico, Maria Jose told me, was a seta de la temporada, or a seasonal wild mushroom, found in the surrounding hills from April to June.**

So, why 1968?

Well, fast forward a year and half: now working on behalf of the region, accompanying the author and wine columnist Elin McCoy, I had dinner with María José in Ezcaray once again, this time at Echuarren, the traditional restaurant next door to El Portal, operated by Francis’ mother, Marisa Sanchez. At one point, María José pulled out a bottle of 1968 Viña Bosconia Tinto Gran Reserva and told us that this was a special vintage for her, since this was the year she was born.***

She also told us that one of Spain’s glossy magazines had recently run a feature called the “Generation of 1968,” centered on Felipe, Prince of Asturias, the only son of King Juan Carlos I and heir to the Spanish throne, who was also born in 1968. Among the famous Spanish 68-ers also included in that feature: María José López de Heredia and Francis Paniego.

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NOTES:

*According to Ms. López de Heredia, Malvasia is also known as Rojal, from the Spanish word for red, because it oxidizes easily.
**Last September, while meandering through a one of San Sebastian’s main squares, Amy and I stumbled upon a series of bookstalls, and by chance came across a beautiful little book called Las Setas Comestibles by Andres Buesas (Vitoria: Caja Provincial de Ahorros de Alava,1967). When I got back to the U.S., I looked up perrechico, and there its was: Tricholoma Georgil, a variety found in northern Spain, known variously as muserones (Cataluña), seta de piedra (Castilla), and setas de orduña. For the record, the variety did not appear in either of my North American wild mushroom field guides.
*** Also the birth year of my brother Patrick, not to mention also that of Manuel Camblor, who commiserates with other members of the turning-forty-this-year-if-I-haven’t already crowd in the ‘comments’ section below.

Taberna Almendro 13, Madrid, Spain, September 20, 2007. Photo: Adrian Murcia

One of my favorite spots anywhere in Spain is Taberna Almendro 13, not far from El Mercado de la Cebada in the neighborhood of La Latina in Old Madrid. My first visit was in 1993, when I was studying Spanish at the Unversidad Complutense de Madrid. It was a carefree time for me: the dollar strong, my obligations few, my bank account fat from years working at Washington, D.C.’s Restaurant Nora during college, living rent free with my parents, God bless ‘em.

Almendro 13 is where I developed a taste for both Manzanilla and Queso de la Serena, two products I would later explore at their respective source: Sanlúcar de Barrameda, near Cádiz, during a sommelier trip to Sherry country in 2005; and Castuera, a town nestled in the rolling hills of La Serena in eastern Extremadura, during a whirlwind study of Jamón Ibérico de Bellota in 2001 funded by a travel grant from the Geoffrey Roberts Trust.

But back in 1993, these two historic Spanish gastronomic wonders, and so many more, were mysteries unveiled daily, forming a constant parade of little gifts in unconventional packaging. Spain’s capital city, bathed in that special pink and blue twilight captured in the photograph above, presided over and abetted my personal transformation, as I settled into the novel sensation of being entirely at home in my own skin, perhaps because this was the first time in my life I felt like there was no other place in the world I would rather be.

Alemendro 13 has in many ways become the symbol of that transformation for me, a place that I never fail to visit every time I’m in Madrid, no matter how brief my stay or busy my agenda, a subconscious but effectively mandatory pilgrimage that’s both a private tribute to bygone innocence and a grateful acknowledgment of its having first lit the path I continue to walk to this day.