Archive

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JR's notes:

I wrote an article (VALUE ADDED RIOJA - June 2000) for DECANTER magazine which looked at the various ways in which Rioja was re-inventing itself to meet the quality expectations of a much broader market in red wine. The article below was a subsequent focus on just one particular aspect of that development - the increase in single-vineyard wines from an area which had made its name as a great regional melting-pot. It was published in WINE magazine in September, 2000. The WINE magazine website is at www.wilmington.co.uk

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RIOJA: THE TRIUMPH OF TERRENO?

The individual vineyards of Rioja are asserting themselves in ever-greater numbers, as John Radford has been finding out.

The early, and continued success of the wines of Rioja - especially since the middle of the nineteenth century - was largely due to their reliability. The ability to select your grape from anywhere in the region meant that, in hot vintages you could use more cool Tempranillo from the highlands of the Alavesa, and in cold, miserable years there would always be some ripe, spicy Garnacha from the sandy soils of the south to warm things up. Add to this some considerable expertise in ageing the wines and you have a marketable product, year in and year out.

The market, however, moves on. Advances in vineyard and winery knowledge have helped even the most disadvantaged vineyards to produce better grapes, and the most dinosaur-like bodegas to make better wines from them. At the top of the tree, so to speak, the great Reservas and Gran Reservas still held sway but, increasingly, only the larger firms had sufficient vineyard holdings to guarantee supplies of the highest quality grapes every year. Meanwhile, entrepreneurial winemakers were starting to study the terreno (what the French call terroir). Rioja is unusually well-supplied with mountainous nooks and lowland crannies, from the cool, pine-forested reaches of the Basque Country in the north to the hot, continental valleys of Navarra in the south-east. The wide variation in exposure, microclimate and soil-types - from chalk-rich clay to sand, from iron-rich clay to alluvium - offered some excellent opportunities to make wine with a real individuality, expressive of its origins and palpably different from mainstream Rioja wine.

The biggest of the newcomers is Finca Valpiedra, from Martínez Bujanda. The company is based in Oyón (Rioja Alavesa) but the 80-hectare (ha) Valpiedra vineyard is in the Rioja Alta, on the bend in the river Ebro between Cenicero and Fuenmayor, and sheltered from the north by rocky outcrops. It's on three terraced levels from 406 to 427 metres in altitude, and the soil is light sandy loam with large pebbles over chalky bedrock. It's planted with 90% Tempranillo, 5% Graciano and Mazuelo and 5% 'experimental varieties', for which read Cabernet-Sauvignon, and the vines are a minimum of 25 years old. Only one wine is made each year, showing 'the highest expression that the vineyard gives' in the words of Ana Martínez Bujanda. It's aged for as long as the winemaker deems necessary in new oak (half French, half American), and released as a Reserva. The first vintage was the 1994, and the 1996 has just reached the market (last tasted MAY00 - 17/20)

One of the most fascinating newcomers to the single-vineyard business is the 'traditionalist' Marqués de Murrieta. Since the sad and unexpected death of Don Vicente Cebrian, the previous Conde de Creixell, his son (also Vicente) has subtly changed direction. The 200 ha Ygay estate on the edge of Logroño comprises more than 50 individual plots and these have been under inspection since 1994. Uniquely, one of the new ventures is a white Reserva named after the Capellanía vineyard and made with grapes from 60-year-old Viura vines, aged for 42 months in oak. Prado Lagar is a 20-year-old vineyard planted in Tempranillo (90%) and Mazuelo (10%). The soil is particularly stony here and the wine - Reserva - has a characteristic mineral flavour as a result, according to Richard Grant, the export director. The third new launch is Dalmau, which is actually the product of three small vineyards, named Valsalao, Canajas and Tocatas, all of which were plan ted in the late 1960s/early 1970s. The wine is 85% Tempranillo, 10% Cabernet-Sauvignon and 5% and undergoes a long fermentation for maximum extraction, followed by 40 months in new French oak. There are more to come.

Contino, one of the original 'single-estate' (as opposed to 'single-vineyard') wines, is also experimenting with the individual plots which make up the total. Jesús Madrazo - son of the recently-retired José Madrazo who made Contino a household name amongst Rioja aficionados - is responsible, and the first wine was a 1995 vintage called Viña del Olivo, from the vines planted around the olive tree in the middle of the estate. It's mainly Tempranillo with a little Mazuelo and the entire production was snapped up by a single London wine-merchant, who sold it for something approaching £25 a bottle. The next one is likely to be Viña de la Encina, although the name is the subject of some arguments over copyright at the moment. Whatever it's finally called, it's made from grapes grown around the holm-oak (encina) in the north-west corner of the estate. Contino is also experimenting with the use of Hungarian oak as well as its usual Fre nch and American for the ageing process.

One of the highlights of the recent tasting to celebrate the 75th anniversary of the Consejo Regulador in Rioja was a wine called 2 Viñedos from Palacios Remondo in Logroño. The 'two vineyards' of the title are a very long way apart - Los Riscos in Haro (Rioja Alta) and La Montesa in Alfaro (Rioja Baja). Both of them are at an altitude of 550 metres but they have widely-differing soils - chalky-clay in Haro and sandy-clay in Alfaro - which, between them, almost symbolise the original Riojano concept of balancing the cool north with the hot south. The wine's made mainly from Tempranillo with some Graciano and another 'experimental variety' - in this case Merlot - and aged in new French oak for ten months and new American for three months (18/20). Incidentally, although it doesn't say so on the label, the straight Herencia Remondo Crianza 1997 comes from La Montesa vineyard (17/20).

A new wine from a traditional bodega is Faustino de Autór from Bodegas Faustino in Oyón (Rioja Alavesa). This is one of the biggest private owners of vineyards in Rioja, because, to quote export director Roberto Alonso 'to get grapes from old vineyards is almost impossible, as the yields are so low after 30-32 years that most growers are not interested.' So the wine is made from grapes harvested in three family-owned vineyards called Los Trinos, Valdeparaiso and Los Caños de Arriba (22 ha altogether). They share a similar exposure and soil (calcareous clay) and were planted with Tempranillo and Graciano in 1958. Malolactic fermentation takes place in new French oak followed by three months on the lees.

And there are more, some of which are already on the market...

La Vicalanda from Bodegas Bilbaínas in Haro - Viña Pomal is a single-estate wine, and La Vicalanda is a 7.5-ha vineyard within it. The wine is 100% Tempranillo with 12 months in a mixture of new and old French and American oak (16/20).

Marqués de Vargas in Logroño (Rioja Alta) makes its Reserva Privada entirely from its own 35-year-old vineyard, which is next to the winery. The 1996 is 70% Tempranillo, 15% Mazuelo and 15% Garnacha with 23 months in oak (17/20).

Rondan from Bodegas Saenz de Santamaría in Cenicero (Rioja Alta) comes from the 40-year-old vineyard of the same name. The 1996 Crianza is 80% Tempranillo, 10% Mazuelo and 10% Graciano with 12 months in oak (15/20).

...And some which we have yet to see...

Culmen Reserva from Bodegas Lan in Fuenmayor (Rioja Alta) - from the pago El Riven, the wine is made in steel but undergoes malolactic fermentation in new French oak, with eighteen months in (fresh) new French oak to follow.

Altos de Corrál from Bodegas Corral in Navarrete (Rioja Alta) - from an old, low-yielding 10-ha vineyard. The first vintage will be released in the autumn of this year.

...And there will, of course, be yet more as Rioja continues to evolve as it has always done. It seems that the trend towards higher-value Rioja wines is becoming stronger, and individual-vineyard wines are one of the elements in that trend. Given the strong market for 'niche' wines made in tiny quantities to be sold at national-lottery prices throughout the world, it will most probably continue and, perhaps, terreno will have triumphed at last.

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