Blame it on Rioja

From a 2008 food & wine-trend annual wrap-up that appeared online at (Washington) dcexaminer.com:

By Jeff Dufour
Examiner Columnist 12/30/08

WASHINGTON – This year might not have equaled 2007 in terms of food news, when Wolfgang Puck and Eric Ripert arrived on the crest of a wave that brought us a panoply of impressive new restaurants. But 2008 was no slouch of a year, either, bringing with it some terrific new concepts and fresh talent. Here’s a look at some of the trends that made the year in restaurants…

6. Spanish wine: Names like Rioja and Tempranillo have entered the lexicon of many diners and drinkers, as more and more bars are serving Iberian wines. Why? We asked John Wabeck, the sommelier at the forthcoming Inox in Tysons Corner. “The pricing still is reasonable, especially for the quality,” he said. “They tend to be a little more full-bodied than a lot of pinot noirs, but not as tannic and full-bodied as cabernet would be. They’re very good food wines.”

Leading a tasting for a group of 20 or 30-somethings, especially compared to ten or fifteen years ago, these days is a little like teaching literature to a bunch of former slackers who have in the intervening years finally realized that reading great books is not only NOT lame but also one of of life’s most edifying and endlessly renewable joys.

That broadening of sensibility and palate is doing wonders for the wine market, even in difficult times.  The $27 wine may have given way to the $11 wine four out of five nights for most consumers, young and old, but drinking they are most certainly doing.

And just as I have witnessed the growth of cheese sophistication and product recognizability in my ten-plus years working the boards of two of this country’s most accomplished cheese programs, so too I am seeing wine consumers grow increasingly less daunted by all those funny names, by those grapes they didn’t even existed the year before, by the ritual of accepting (and in some cases returning) a bottle opened tableside.  Pay a little attention, and there are rewards–social, gustatory, and even spiritual.

Fast forward to the 19th century, when phylloxera decmates the vineyards of France and panicked negotiants from Bordeaux, fearing the sudden loss of their overseas markets, look south for salvation. Modern Rioja is born.

Along the way, pioneering bodegueros discover that some barrels are aging with enviable grace. Thus, the Gran Reserva is born.

Check out part two of Doug Frost MS, MW’s introduction to Rioja last month at CIA Greystone in Napa. We are just about to get to our first wine, López de Heredia Viña Tondonia Blanco Gran Reserva 1981.

Stay tuned.

And now back to wine….

Two press-release wire services have reported within the last two weeks that nine bodegas in D.O.Ca. Rioja are backing a comprehensive research and development project to increase dramatically two key polyphenols shown in recent studies to possess properties beneficial to health. Here’s an excerpt from a press release that appeared on NewswireToday.com:

Nine wineries from La Rioja (Bodegas Bilbaínas, Bodegas Dinastía Vivanco, Bodegas Viña Hermosa - Santiago Ijalba, Bodegas Juan Alcorta, Marqués de Murrieta, Bodegas Ontañón, Bodegas Patrocinio, Regalía de Ollauri and Bodegas Riojanas) have spent a year developing a pioneering project worldwide to elaborate wines with quercitin and reseveratrol levels 10 times higher than those currently obtained.

Throughout the 2008 production amounts of these polyphenols have been shown to be increasing at these nine selected wineries. This has been proven through a variety of tests such as, physical-chemical treatments, controls and analysis along its vegetative process prior to ripening.

The harvest has been recently completed and these special treatments have been performed on the grapes harvested. Currently the first micro-vinifications and elaborations on a pilot scale are being developed. The first R&D wines made from these grapes will be bottled over the next year.

This development is news to me. I had no idea this kind of research was going on. It’s part brilliant/part, well, I don’t know, unsettling. How are they isolating and increasing the levels of these compounds? How do these increased levels affect the flavor and texture of the wine, if at all? Is the market ready for polyphenolically-fortified wines? Is it a risky move at a time when minimal intervention at the winery is gaining favor or is a tactically brilliant maneuver that will act as a lightening rod of worldwide attention towards the fascinating interplay of tradition and innovation taking place in the upper Ebro Valley these days?

We shall see. Time to start asking questions.

Tasting at Viña Real, Elciego, Spain, September 2008. Photo by Gretchen Thomas.

A weekly series devoted to Rioja wines that deliver great quality for less than $20

Although more and more wines being produced in Rioja today are opting out of D.O.Ca. Rioja’s age classification system (choosing instead to carry the standard Guarantee of Origin back label, the same designation used for young, unoaked so called joven wines), the great majority of Rioja coming into this country carries the Crianza, Reserva, or Gran Reserva stamp.

Crianzas by law must spend two years at the winery before release, including at least a year in 225 liter oak barrels. It’s the designation with the freshest, fruitiest style, and that accessibility makes them attractive everyday wines.

One of my favorites is the Viña Real Crianza from the house of CVNE, now available in the much-praised 2005 vintage. The color of the wine is somewhere between a rich garnet and light ruby, and the aromas offer lots of red fruit, especially strawberry, (very much in keeping with Tempranillo from Rioja Alavesa, where all Viña Real fruit is sourced), plus a very pleasant mineral character that hints at wet topsoil.

When I last tasted the Viña Real 2005 Crianza, which spent 14 months in a combination of American and French oak, I was particularly struck by its extraordinary balance. Acidity, fruit, mineral, oak all tied together very nicely. Super-quaffable and mouthwateringly fruity, this is about as good as entry level Rioja gets, and it would be very easy to recommend this wine, whether it’s to my mom calling from a wine shop in Virginia looking for ideas of what to buy that night for dinner (I love it when she does that) or to a diner at the restaurant looking for one of those rare “cross-over” wines, which is to say, something that could go with sauteed Tasmanian Sea Trout just as well as it would with Roast Squab.

And speaking of food, thanks to all that red fruit (i.e. cherry and strawberry), this wine would be the perfect foil for Roast Duck Breast, seared skin-side down over high heat to transform all that fat into crackling deliciousness, and finished in the oven until medium rare.

Viña Real 2005 Crianza can be purchased online at the Wine Exchange for $14.99/bottle 

It’s one of those questions that has troubled me for as long as I can remember: when describing a single grape type–Chardonnay or Cabernet Sauvignon, for example–is “grape varietal” synonymous with “grape variety”?

In other words, is it correct for me to say or write, “Tempranillo is the dominant black grape varietal in Rioja”?

No, says Jancis Robinson MW, in a recent post on Catavino.

“They are used interchangeably - but wrongly!” Ms. Robinson says in a follow-up comment to a Catavino interview conducted two weeks ago in Barcelona.

“Variety is the noun and applies to plants and vines,” she explains in a clarification sent to Catavino’s Gabriella Opaz via Blackberry. “Varietal is an adjective that can be applied to wines named after the variety from which it was made! Sorry to fuss but it would be useful to keep these two terms distinct.”

Usage distinctions like these, which help writers and public speakers think more carefully about language (and potentially steer clear of public embarrassment), might be very English, but they ain’t fussy.

So here’s to you, Ms. Robinson: rock on varietally.