Blame it on Rioja

In this, the third and final installment of Doug Frost’s lead up to the first wine of a Rioja seminar held at the Culinary Institute of America’s Greystone campus during that institution’s Worlds of Flavor Conference earlier this year, our esteemed MS/MW takes us up to the modern era, again using the López de Heredia Viña Tondonia ‘81 Blanco Gran Reserva as a point of reference, singling the wine out as coming from another era.  It is this wine and this house to which Doug makes reference at the beginning of the clip, as we have just learned that the wine spends 9 and 1/2 years in oak before bottling.

Unfortunately, we’ll have to end it here, since the video of the last part of Doug’s speech, in which he briefly touches on the winemaking mechanics of the ‘International style,’ a later and even more modern development, is unusuable. Once I find a way to put the audio over other images, I may release it as a podcast or as another posted video

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.

Part of what makes Doug Frost MS, MW such an effective wine communicator is that the guy has a knack for scene setting. It’s also one of the reasons why I feel a strong sense of kinship with him.

The first wine he presented at a Rioja seminar last month in Napa, during the Culinary Institute of America’s “Mediterranean Odyssey” Worlds of Flavor Conference, was a López de Heredia Viña Tondonia 1981 Rioja Blanco Gran Reserva, the product of an archetypically classic winemaking house  quite familiar to any reader of BioR and/or close follower of Spanish wine.

But, hold on a second. Before we get to the wine in question, the scene needs a little settin’, and that’s where Doug Frost comes in.

Twenty-two minutes later, we’ve only just crossed over into the 20th century.

I can’t really blame him.

To understand what makes López de Heredia a ‘classic’ house and this classic style of winemaking developed, you really have to start at the beginning of winemaking in Spain,  at least as it existed in the first few centuries of the common era, around the time that the Romans introduced to the Iberian peninsula an innovation that would remain largely unchallenged for centuries to come as the ‘correct’ way to make wine:  the sandstone press or lagar.

And though it is widely known that Rioja is typically a blend of several different grape varieties, what is not so widely known, I would imagine, is why this is the case.

To uncover the origins of the winemaker’s ‘field blend,’ and to learn how a proto-Rioja might have tasted, check out Doug’s short clip.

More installments to follow.

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.

Lisa Abend reports this week in Time Magazine that Barcelona’s Institute for Electronics recently unveiled a so-called e-tongue capable of discerning grape varieties as well as vintages, the idea being that science could provide a tool useful in the detection of wine fraud, a concern that seems more and more top-of-mind as prestige wine prices skyrocket on the ever-more-popular wine auction market.

Details were few (this is a weekly news magazine, after all, a news vehicle sadly on the brink of becoming a marginalized medium), but the implications on the surface seem pretty far-reaching.

Kind of reminds me a little bit of Tab’s bid to unseat Coca-Cola in the 1970s.