Burn, baby, burn

Happy 2010 to you, loyal fans of Inside Rioja!  I guess that we celebrate New Year’s like everyone everywhere by eating and drinking far too much but we have a tradition in our family that I want to share with you, hence the title of this post.  Every New Year’s Eve, just before dinner, each of us dons a piece of red clothing.  When we sit down to eat, we write all the things we want to forget about the past year on one piece of paper and our New Year’s resolutions on another.  We keep the resolutions in our billfolds all year and read them again on the following New Year’s Eve.  That’s always good for a laugh or two!

After eating our twelve grapes at each stroke of midnight from the clock tower on the Madrid City Hall, hugging, kissing and toasting with cava, we all go outside to the terrace of our apartment where we watch the neighbors shoot off fireworks from one apartment building to another and listen to the fire trucks roaring up and doen the street. Then we burn our piece of red clothing and our ‘things to forget’ list from the past year.

Since our son’s birthday falls on December 31, he always invites his friends over for a glass or two of cava before his sister and he go out dancing.  This year, John is in Adelaide, Australia finishing a Master’s in marketing, but his friends came over anyway and we toasted to the picture of him that we had put at his place on the dining room table.  Toñica and I always laugh when we look at the pictures from past New Year’s Eves at how much those kids have grown, while we always look the same!

Los Santos Inocentes

Today, December 28, Spain and most Spanish-speaking countries celebrate ‘el día de los santos inocentes’ (the innocent saints), that originally commemorated the murder of all children under two years old in Bethlehem by King Herod, ostensibly to rid himself of the baby Jesus.

Today, however, is the day when people play all kinds of practical jokes on one another, like April Fools’ Day in the USA and the UK or les Poissons d’Avril in France. People will call to say you’ve won the lottery, kids will stick paper dolls on their friends’ backs and the newspapers will invent stories, some of them so realistic that most people will believe them. 

For example, several years ago our local newspaper reported that the sailboat that had competed in the World’s Cup, sponsored by Rioja wines, was offering free cruises down the Ebro river.  Hundreds of people went down to the river to line up for a ride.  Another year, it was announced that city hall had approved a subway system for Logroño, and that a world-class soccer star had signed a deal with the local team.

Lately, however, these practical jokes or ‘inocentadas’ are absent from the papers.  A journalist suggested in this morning’s LA RIOJA that the daily doses of bad news due to the current economic conditions were about as much as people were willing to put up with, some of which, such as ‘2010 will be the year the Spanish economy starts to grow again’ and ’the housing and unemployment crises are about to end’ are so unbelievable that they sound like December 28th’s practical jokes all year round.

I, for one, am going to start a new December 28 tradition:  give my friends some good news and buy them a glass of wine.  That’s what we need around here today!

Christmas in Rioja

Here, the holiday season lasts about a month – from December 8 (the Feast of the Immaculate Conception) to January 6 (Epiphany).  Imagine starting the party at Thanksgiving and ending it on New Year’s Day and you get the idea.

There are quite a few differences between celebrating in the USA and in Spain.  In the first place, there is no fixed tradition about who gives the gifts and when.  Traditionally, gift giving took place on the morning of January 6, Epiphany, the day the three wise men arrived in Bethlehem bearing gifts for the infant Jesus.  The holiday itself is called ‘Reyes’ or ‘Kings’.

This is not always the case, however.

When I was recently married with young children, we usually spent the holidays at my parents-in-law’s house in Zaragoza.  My father-in-law was from Barcelona, and his family’s tradition was to give gifts on Christmas Eve, something my family still does today.  Their Nativity scene had the crib with the infant Jesus, Mary, Joseph, assorted sheep and a curious figure squatting behind a palm tree called ‘el Caganer’ or ‘the crapper’.When my kids and their cousins wanted their presents, they had to yell, ‘Tío Cagatarro’  three times.

To maintain this tradition we have a ‘crapper’  next to the manger.

In the Basque part of Rioja, the man who brings the presents is ‘el olentzero’, a man who delivers the coal.  Curiously, in Spain, when kids misbehave, their parents say that instead of presents, they’re going to get a lump of coal.

Santa Claus (Papá Noel) is also on the scene, undoubtedly due to Anglo-Saxon (in other words, commercial) influences.  I always laugh when I hear ‘White Christmas’  and ‘Jingle Bells’ sung  in Spanish. It’s like singing  ’La Bamba’ at Thanksgiving.

One of the highlights of the season is the Christmas lottery,  held on December 22.  Every radio and TV station carries the drawing, with the numbers and prizes sung aloud by children from an orphans’ school near Madrid.  After the winning numbers are drawn, TV crews rush to the city or village to film the happy winners drinking wine and planning how to tell their bosses they won’t return to work the next day.

The big family dinner is always on Christmas Eve – an event that I always tell my Spanish friends is analogous to Thanksgiving in the USA.

On New Year’s Eve at exactly 12 midnight, everyone celebrates the new year by eating 12 grapes, one for every chime of the bells in the city hall tower in Madrid.

I don’t think children care whether the coal man, the three kings or Santa brings the presents, but I’m sure what the parents think.  Imagine having your children around the house from December 15 to January 7 and having to wait until the night of January 5 to receive their presents!  Most parents I know let them open their gifts on Christmas Eve to keep them busy until they have to go back to school!

Bodegas Regalía de Ollauri’s geothermal energy project

You don’t have to be a fan of Jules Verne to know that the earth radiates heat from its core. In countries near the Arctic Circle, this energy has been used for years to heat buildings.  As far as I know, however, no winery has used geothermal energy in the winemaking  process until this technology was put into place by Bodegas Regalía de Ollauri in Rioja. The project was announced in early November and presented to the recent Wine Future 09 conference in Rioja, where it was received enthusiastically.

The idea is simple:  although the outside temperature may fluctuate between -10ºC and +40ºC  (14º to 104ºF)  in Rioja, the temperature at a depth of 100 meters under the winery is a constant 14º to 18ºC (57º to 65ºF).  By drilling and installing a closed circuit of pipes connected to the heating and cooling network in the winery, warm water can be pumped to the surface during the winter and conversely, cold water to the surface in the summer, thus greatly reducing the energy needed to heat or cool the winery or a room to the desired temperature,for example, for alcoholic or malolactic fermentation. The process is facilitated by using a water-water pump which releases no CO2 into the atmosphere.

Regalía de Ollauri boasts that by using this system it is the least contaminating winery in the world, reducing total CO2 emissions by 80%.

The winery has recently released a new product, Versum, made using this technology.  The name, from the Latin ‘return’, ‘turn’, change’  is meant as a symbol of returning to the earth, the source of this energy.

I applaud this idea.  Using renewable energy plays an important role in slowing down the effects of climate change. The Regalía de Ollauri project, using technology provided by Sapje, an engineering firm in Rioja, will undoubtedly be copied by other wineries, given this unlimited resource lying just below the earth’s surface.  It’s an example of copying that I like!

http://www.bodegasregalia.es/contenidos/en/geotermia/index_geotermia.php?menu=geotermia

Bridges

If you think I’m referring to those steel structures that take you over rivers, gorges or deep valleys, guess again.  A ‘bridge’ or puente in Spain is a long weekend when there’s a holiday on Tuesday or Thursday and you get the Monday or Friday off, ‘bridging’ the workday.

Next week we have a good puente in Spain, because Tuesday (December  is the Feast of the Immaculate Conception, a holiday in predominantly Catholic countries in Europe such as Spain, Austria, Italy and Portugal.

Its international appeal was brought home to me by a message that an Italian friend posted on Facebook this morning.  She said “aspettando il ponte” (looking forward to the bridge). Me, too!

A puente sets off a mass migration of Spaniards to their second homes in the mountains or the beach, sometimes hours away, complete with dire warnings from the police about the number of cars on the road, driving safely, increased patrols by unmarked cars, hidden radar and, sadly, a number of fatal accidents.

 Here in La Rioja, the police have predicted that 300,000 cars will crisscross the region from today at 3 PM until midnight on Wednesday.

Sometimes holidays will fall on both Tuesday and Thursday, in which case many companies close down for the entire week.  This happy circumstance is called an acueducto (aqueduct) and is a real cause for celebration in Spain, since everyone here is always complaining about work.  One of the funniest jokes I ever heard here is a conversation between two men that goes like this:

A:  “How many people work at your company?”

B:  “Well, there are 75 people on the payroll  but only five or six really work!”

An unpleasant consequence of any puente is the traffic jam, an obvious event because everyone is going everywhere at the same time.  Spaniards, who consider themselves to be very clever (and I agree!) try to avoid traffic jams by leaving early or taking alternate routes, which never works because everyone does the same thing.  I’ve found, after 38 years of puentes, that the best thing to do is to leave at the usual time and take the usual route.  No matter what you do, your trip will take longer than usual.

Nothing is more frustrating during a puente than reading the newspaper in a bar with a torrential rainstorm outside and seeing pictures of others basking in the warm sunshine somewhere else in Spain while you’re soaking wet.  The next year, you decide to go there for the puente and it rains all four days.

The next worst thing about a puente is the traffic jam on the way back.  You arrive so upset that you’re more tired and frustrated than before you left home!

For me, the smartest thing to do during a puente is to stay home.  The streets and bars are full of tourists who don’t know the best places to go, but I can smugly go to my favorite haunts, get spectacular service, and not worry about driving home!

We review the Wine Future Rioja 09 conference

The Wine Future Rioja 09 conference was held here on November 12 and 13.  Organized by Pancho Campo, Spain’s first Master of Wine, the event was touted as the most important gathering of luminaries in the wine business.  The cost was steep, about $1,500 for the two-day event, including a megatasting given by Robert Parker, arguably the world’s most influential wine writer.

Initially I was going to pass because of the price but finally I was able to attend, thanks to a complimentary invitation from one of the sponsors, Marqués de Riscal, whose finance director Fernando Salamero was my boss for 15 years while I was the director of the Rioja Exporters’ Association.

When I saw the list of speakers I was a little disappointed, because most of them were my age or older, which didn’t seem to jive with the idea of the future of our industry.

 Having said that, I especially enjoyed the presentations about social media (Ryan Opaz, Gary Vaynerchuk and Jeremy Benson), Miguel Torres’ talk about climate change and what Torres is doing about it, Robert Joseph’s thought-provoking talk about making wine easier to understand, Tim Hanni’s presentation about taste perceptions and Nicola Jenkin’s talk about packaging.

I personally feel that an important issue for the future of wine is overcoming the major hurdles small and many medium-sized wineries have to overcome just to find a route to market.  We can talk about empowering consumers all day but if consumers can’t buy certain products because of

• the increasing concentration of distributors (USA)
• the increased power of supermarkets and the demise of traditional retailers (UK)
• the impossibility to sell wine through the internet between countries in the European Union
• the difficulties small US wineries face to sell directly to consumers in different states (although this is improving)

these brands are handicapped.

In Europe, traditional wine producing countries face decreasing per capita consumption of wine and a lack of interest on the part of young consumers. There was a lot of talk about being able to connect with consumers but nothing was said about strategies to interest young consumers from Spain, France and Italy to wine.

I think there should have been more emphasis on these real issues facing our industry.

Parker tasting:

We tasted 20 wines (18 garnachas and two Riojas).  When the wines were announced in the program,there was a big fuss in Rioja about the absence of any Riojas and consequently, two were included at the last minute.  Parker defended himself by saying that he wanted to focus on the widespread international use of garnacha rather than on tempranillo, mainly used in Spain.  In addition, he stated emphatically that he didn’t want to give the impression that he was sacrificing his independence by promoting the wines in the region hosting the conference.  Fair enough,  but this explanation wasn’t well received by the locals because of the increasing range of garnachas from Rioja available here.  They weren’t, however, known by Mr. Parker, leading me to believe that their international distribution is weak (Garnacha producers from Rioja take note!).

Before the tasting, I, like most people, expected a symphony of overripe, overoaked, high alcohol fruit bombs, but was very pleasantly surprised, especially by the seven Châteauneuf-du-Papes, none of which had seen any oak at all.  All of them were really elegant and showed both the place they were from and the characteristics of the garnacha grape.  The 1945 Marqués de Riscal was superb.  I also liked the Clos Erasmus from Priorat (not at all inky and inscrutable), Espectacle from Montsant, the Clarendon Hills Old Vines and the Killakanoon from Australia.  On the down side, I didn’t think the Contador (from Benjamín Romeo in Rioja) was ready to drink yet and the Aquilón and Atteca Armas (both from the neighboring region of Aragón and sold by the Spanish specialist importer Jorge Ordóñez) had too much new oak , obliterating the fruit, for my taste.

 I was also fortunate to help a local journalist with his interview with Parker. In the interview he defended himself from his detractors by saying that he had an eclectic palate and that he was displeased with two of the wines in the tasting because they were overoaked!

He came across as a passionate, sincere, fiercely independent guy , which I liked.

I enjoyed the event because of the social media presentations, the networking oportunities it gave me and chatting the other speakers, most of them old friends.

However, next time, I hope distribution and social networks are at the top of the agenda!

Solar de Samaniego crianza 2003

Solar de Samaniego

Two weekends ago we stayed in Logroño instead of going to our summer house in Cantabria - it was just after the Wine Future Rioja 09 conference (more on that in a future post) and we were entertaining guests, so on Sunday I went down to our wine cellar to grab a bottle, with nothing particular in mind.  After a quick look around I chose Solar de Samaniego crianza 2003 because I hadn’t tasted it in a while and wanted to see how it was evolving, especially because 2003 was only rated ‘good’ by the Rioja Regulatory Council. Toñica and I were very pleasantly surprised after opening the bottle because in our opinion it tasted great, once again driving home the message that the exception confirms the rule where vintage ratings are concerned.

The wine is a blend of tempranillo and graciano, unusual for a crianza. It showed a medium ruby color, with an extremely elegant nose of strawberries, gingerbread cookies and maraschino cherries.  It had a medium mouthfeel with great balance between fruit and oak.  It went down perfectly with our lunch of meatloaf and green beans.

Speaking of mouthfeel, I remember a tasting class I took many years ago with Karen MacNeil, one of the USA’s great wine educators.  She liked to compare mouthfeel to different kinds of milk: skim and whole milk corresponded to light and heavy mouthfeel, with medium somewhere in between.  I used this analogy successfully in tastings in the USA but got a lot of blank stares in most of Europe, proving that wine tasting vocabulary is by no means universal. Last year I gave a tasting to some mainland Chinese wine writers, who agreed that one of the wines smelled like ‘ Beijing during the winter’.  I still haven’t totally figured that one out, but they liked the wine so it must have been a compliment!

Solar de Samaniego is often overlooked because its wines are neither traditional nor ultramodern, but I think it deserves a wider following because the wines are extremely well-made and mighty tasty.  Founded in the early 1970s in Laguardia in Rioja Alavesa by a family with roots in Rioja, the winery is named after Félix María de Samaniego, an 18th century writer of fables who was born and lived in Laguardia.  In fact, the ruins of Samaniego’s country house, where he wrote many of his fables, are in the middle of one of the company’s vineyards.  The former PR director of the company has taken advantage of this location to start a company specializing in picnics and romantic vineyard dinners. 

Solar de Samaniego also owns a winery and vineyards in Ribera del Duero (Durón) which it sells along with its Rioja brands in one of Spain’s most successful wine clubs, which it owns and operates.

Rotary horizontal toasting – science comes to the art of barrel making

There aren’t many wine events for consumers here - I guess wineries must think they’re preaching to the choir.  Once a month, however, our local newspaper La Rioja organizes a tutored tasting by a Rioja winemaker that I try not to miss.

This month’s tasting was unique because the topic was oak.  As you know, the choice of different types of oak (American, French, Russian, Slovenian, Spanish and even Mongolian), the cooperage and the level of toasting are an important part of the winemaker’s arsenal. The novelty of this tasting was a demonstration by a local cooperage, Quercus, of the influence of different levels of toasting on the same wine using the same type of barrel.

Barrelmaking is a craft where precision is the key.  Barrels are assembled without nails or screws, only steel hoops holding the staves together.  Fire is an important part of this process, because heat shapes the wood, making it easier to bend and toasting the inside of the barrel gives flavor to the wine.  The toasting is normally done over a wood fire and the heat generally can’t be applied uniformly which creates variations from one barrel to another.  Coopers make their barrels with light, medium or heavy toast, and often medium + or heavy +.  Although the primary use of oak in winemaking is to slowly microoxigenate the wine, creating long strings of tannins that help the wine to age, the level of toast can provide different flavor sensations.

Quercus has taken the toasting process one step further with its rotary horizontal toasting process, precisely applying different heat intensities over varying amounts of time to create uniformly toasted barrels to the exact specifications of the winemaker.

Quercus uses four types of toasting, Haro, Borgoña (Burgundy), Ribera and Côte d’Or.  They differ on the rate of increase, decrease and maintenance of temperature throughout the process. 

In the first part of the tasting we tried Haro, Borgoña and Ribera toasts with the same wine. With Haro, I noticed a high level of toast on the nose but especially on the palate, with not much fruit showing through.

With Ribera, it was easier to detect the fruit but again, the toast seemed to predominate.

Borgoña was my favorite, with less of a toasty sensation and more elegance (Readers of Inside Rioja should have figured this out already!)

Côte d’Or was more difficult to distinguish (isn’t Côte d’Or in Burgundy, too?) because it was only shown in the second part of the tasting in the wines of Lar de Paula, a winery firmly in the modern Rioja camp, made using new French oak. 

4 Besos (Four Kisses) had a medium cherry color, showed acidic red fruit notes in the nose  that reminded me of cranberries.  It had lots of oak and high acidity on the palate.  

Lar de Paula reserva 2004 was dark ruby with both red and black fruit on the nose and lots of oak on the palate.  It was the wine I liked the least.

Merus tempranillo 2005 was the star of the tasting, showing an intense black cherry color but with  a fresh red fruit and toasted coffee bouquet.  It was long and elegant on the palate with soft tannins balancing the fruit. 

This tasting was not only fun but highly educational.  It proved to me that making barrels is not only an art but a science, too.

The economics of the 2009 harvest and its implications

The Rioja Regulatory Council recently announced that the harvest subject to protection in 2009 was 397,42 million kilograms of grapes and 5,15 million kilos for the quality reserve.  This is less than the 410 million kilos that I mentioned in my post of October 27.

What do these numbers mean? I think it’s interesting to see how the Council calculates them as grapes become wine and are aged in barrel and bottle before release from Rioja wineries.

Every fall, just before the harvest begins, vineyard owners receive a card with a microchip.  The chip contains data about each owner’s  holdings of red and white grapes. It works like a credit card.  During the harvest, each time the grower delivers a load of grapes to a winery, an inspector subtracts the amount of red and white grapes from the total in the chip.  Once the balance  reaches zero, the grower is not allowed to deliver any more grapes.  A little wheeling and dealing takes place, however, as some growers, due to drought, hail or other reasons produce a little less than their cards indicate, so a grower with a little more than allowed often ‘borrows’  a card with a balance to be able to deliver more grapes.

At wineries, a sample of each load of grapes is analyzed and the potential alcohol, color, tannins, amount of botrytized grapes, age of the vineyard and other parameters determine the price the winery is willing to pay.

Once the harvest ends, each winery sends a harvest report to the Council, and the Council in turn informs the winery how much wine can be vinified and subject to protection as Rioja wine.  Ususlly the conversion factor is 72 liters of wine for every 100 kilos of grapes, but it can be as low as 70 or as high as 74 depending on the harvest and the state of the Rioja business.

After alcoholic and malolactic fermentation take place, the wineries prepare samples for blind tasting by the Council’s tasting committees, made up of winemakers from Rioja wineries.  It’s like a peer review. At the same time, each batch of wine is chemically analyzed. Wines that pass the tasting and chemical analysis are then certified as Rioja.

At this stage, some wines are bottled and sold as ’sin crianza’ or young Rioja.  The Council issues back labels and subtracts the corresponding amount of wine in their books from that winery’s total for that year.  In the same way, when wine is put into barrels for ageing, the Council records the amount of wine being aged.  At the ‘crianza’, ‘reserva’ and ‘gran reserva’ stages, the same procedure is followed, with the Council issuing only as many back labels as the balance of wine from that vintage in the winery, according to the Council’s accounting.  Note that the correct figure is the Council’s, not the winery’s.

Once the winery has asked for all the back labels it’s entitled to from a given vintage, it can’t sell any more wine from that year.  This system has been in place for all vintages since 1980.

Another interesting feature is the quality reserve as mentioned above.  Wineries are allowed to petition the Council to vinify up to 5% more than the maximum allowed to compensate for potential shortfalls in small harvests.  There’s a catch, though.  If there’s no shortfall, the winery has to send the wine to the distillery.

For the last week or so, the Council has been debating what should be done in 2010 if sales remain stagnant.  Traditionally, a reliable measurement of the ‘health’ of the Rioja business is the inventory to sales ratio.  If the ratio is about 3 (years of sales as inventory of wine), both wineries and growers are comfortable with the state of affairs.  If, however, the ratio dips below 3, it indicates a shortage of wine and the quality reserve program kicks in to alleviate it.  If, on the other hand, the ratio is over 3,5 either sales are stagnant, too much wine has been made, or in this year’s case, both).  Under debate at present is the possibility of only allowing 90% of the maximum allowable yield (5.850 kgs/hectare for red grapes and 8.100 Kgs/ha. for white) in the 2010 harvest.  This will bring the ratio back to about 3.  This seems to satisfy the wineries but the counteroffer made by representatives of the growers remains to be seen!

This may sound complicated, but it shows how committed the wineries and growers are to stability.  As you can see, there’s a lot more to a Rioja harvest than meets the eye!

 

Castillo Ygay gran reserva 1989 ‘Early release’

Luciano de Murrieta

After a hard week at the annual meeting of the Great Wine Capitals Global Network in Bordeaux, we decided to spend a relaxing weekend at our summer house near Santander.  However, gale force winds and driving rain made us miserable so we decided to leave early for Logroño, a nice Sunday lunch and a warm, dry house.

While Toñica prepared a dish of hake fillets in white wine sauce, I went to the cellar in the basement to find an appropriate wine for the meal.  My eyes landed on a bottle of Marqués de Murrieta Castillo Ygay gran reserva 1989 which ended up on the dinner table.  Not only did it go really well with the fish, it brought back memories of how Rioja used to be made.

I remember my first visit to the winery in the mid-1980s. Winemaker Alfonso Troya, who learned his trade from the great Jesús Marrodán, explained that traditional houses like Murrieta didn’t need to age their wines in bottle before release – they were aged for years in old barrels that had lost most of their capacity to microoxigenate the wine inside, so consequently, were ready to drink when bottled.

In the late 1980s the winery decided to release some of the Castillo de Ygay vintages with less barrel age than usual, holding back the rest for a further 10 to 20 years.  These were the ‘early release’ Ygays, the first of which, 1985, was released in 1994. 

Murrieta wines are produced exclusively from the winery’s extensive vineyards just outside Logroño and are blends of tempranillo and a generous amount of mazuelo, along with some garnacha and graciano.  The percentages weren’t on the back label but most of the vintages favor the first two varieties.

The wine showed a medium brick color with no hint of brown, a  nose that reminded me of spice and a cedar chest with hints of oak and a light, elegant mouthfeel.  I thought it was at the top of its game.  Perfect with Toñica’s fish.

Murrieta was always easy for me to recognize at tastings because of its distinctive spicy nose with just a hint of oak and the 1989 early release took me back 20 years, before the Wine Spectator and Robert Parker’s influence was as overpowering as it is today and fine, old Riojas were in great demand.

At the time this wine was made, the owner, Vicente Cebrián, a businessman with interests in newspaper publishing (he was one of the owners of the now-defunct newspaper YA), wanted to restore the estate to its original late 19th century splendor but suddenly died of a heart attack, leaving the property in the hands of his teenaged children Vicente and Cristina.  They have continued their father’s plans but have, unfortunately in my opinion, given the wines a more modern style that may not be appreciated by the winery’s loyal fans.

The gran reserva 1989, however, was made before this change came about and I thoroughly enjoyed it! Call me a traditionalist, but wines like this are a treat!