Archive

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JR's notes:

This is a short piece about visiting Rioja and was written for the launch issue of 'egg:at home', which was the customer magazine of the egg.com internet bank, now relaunched. I don't know whether the magazine is still published but you can find the bank at new.egg.com (yes, that is right). I have added some updated contact details (in italics and square brackets) at the end.

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Rioja: the Stamp of Quality

by John Radford

Bilbao is the starting-point: whether you've flown in from Heathrow and hired a car or done it the civilised way with your own car aboard the Pride of Bilbao out of Portsmouth, the A68 autopista beckons you south through the limestone cliffs and soaring pine-forests of the Basque Country towards Rioja. The road leaps over the Cantabrian mountains and enters the province of Álava (Araba, in Basque), most northerly of the three sub-divisions of Rioja wine production...

...But don't stop here, not yet - cruise onward across the border into the province of La Rioja itself and make your first stop at the beguiling small town of Haro, capital of Rioja's westernmost sub-division, the Rioja Alta - the Riojano heartland. This is the home of the Tempranillo, Rioja's main grape, which gives elegance and fruit to the finished wine. In the restaurants the food is simple and unpretentious and the wines ranges from light and fruity cosecheros at about a pound a bottle in the local shops to the magnificent, burnished, cigar-box-scented and cinammon-burnished gran reservas of the great houses. The cosechero wines - often trodden in stone troughs and drunk as soon as fermentation has finished - were already being made when the Romans came here in the first century BC. The great reservas date from the nineteenth century, when the Marqués de Riscal came home from Bordeaux with stout oak casks and new ideas about winemaking and fe rmentation. The combination has been brilliantly successful.

Haro is also home to some of the most famous bodegas: La Rioja Alta, CVNE, López-Heredia and others. There's a very useful guidebook available from the Consejo Regulador (Regulatory Council) which lists all the main wine-routes, the bodegas which welcome visitors and some background details of each (address: Estambrera 52, 26006 Logroño, Spain). Stay at the Hotel Los Agustinos - a former fortified convent built in 1383 - and eat at Terete, a former butcher's shop now famous for its simple but classic cooking.

Heading south, visit Santo Domingo de la Calzada - where the pilgrim route to Santiago crosses the Río Oja which gives the region its name. The old pilgrim hostel is now a magnificent Parador, and is situated just across the road from the splendid cathedral, which features a live cock and hen in a coop over the main door - the story is too long to tell here, but they've been joining in with the services for several hundred years.

Heading east past Logroño, the financial capital of La Rioja, we enter the third sub-division, Rioja Baja. Here the climate is hotter and the soil sandier, and the Garnacha grape makes wines of great warmth and strength which blend well with Tempranillo in the best wines of most of the classic bodegas.

This small region put the stamp of quality on Spanish red wines more than 150 years ago, and it remains the country's flagship area - just an hour's drive from Bilbao. Explore and enjoy.

Useful contacts:

British Airways (Heathrow-Bilbao from £175) [08-457-222-111]

Iberia Airlines (Heathrow-Bilbao from £142) 0870-606-2032 [www.iberia.com]

P&O European Ferries (Portsmouth-Bilbao, Car plus two adults from £309) [0870-600-0600 and www.poportsmouth.com]

Consejo Regulador, Rioja (Guidebook to bodegas) Tel. (0034) 941-500-400; Fax (0034) 941-500-672; website [www.riojawine.com]

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