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!

The 2009 harvest – promising quality, uncertainty about quantity

Last week, the Rioja Regulatory Council officially declared the end of the 2009 harvest.  The Council wasn’t in a position to estimate the total size of the harvest yet, but has confidently stated that the maximum size of the harvest subject to protection as D.O. Ca. Rioja will be about 410 million kilograms of grapes.  This is easy to calculate:

56.825 hectares of red grapes x 6.500 kgs/hectare (maximum allowable yield) plus 4.057 hectares of white grapes x 9.000 kgs/hectare = 406 million kg. of grapes.

What will be even more difficult to predict is the actual number of liters allowed to be aged, bottled and sold as Rioja, because once malolactic fermentation has taken place, wineries have to submit samples to a tasting committee where they will likely, but not necessarily, be accepted.

This procedure illustrates a big difference in grape growing between Europe and the rest of the world.  Outside Europe, viticulture is a business where there’s no guarantee that your grapes will be bought.  In Europe, however, within the Appellation Contrôlée system (Denominación de Origen in Spain or in the case of Rioja, Denominación de Origen Calificada), owning a vineyard and growing grapes is a privilege granted by the AC and at least in Rioja, farmers know that someone will buy their grapes, although price is subject to supply and demand as well as quality.

Over the years, the Council has tried to encourage price stability by balancing the supply of grapes and wine with market demand with the help of European Union wine laws, that formally don’t allow total production of wine to increase but do permit the transfer of planting rights between regions.  In this way, the vineyard area has increased more or less in step with the increase in demand for our wines. Yields, however, have also increased and this is the source of the problem today.

It’s impossible for farmers to produce exactly 6.500 kg. of red grapes per hectare.  Older vines produce much lower yields while young vines planted with high-yielding clones produce a lot more.  As long as average grape prices were high (between 0,80 and 1 euro a kilo), farmers didn’t mind doing a green harvest (culling the vines to reduce production).  This year, however, because demand has weakened due to the economy, the prospect of a big harvest  has pushed grape prices down. Consequently, farmers are interested in selling everything they’ve produced.  Traditionally the Council let growers  deliver up to 25% more than  the maximum  allowed production to wineries and coops, so that these could choose the best wines for the tasting committee and sell the extra 25% outside Rioja as table wine. Unfortunately, this policy created a large inventory of bottled table wine that competed directly with the most inexpensive Riojas at a time when sales in Spain began to slide. Alarmed, in 2007 the wineries, coops and one of the farmer’s associations voted to gradually reduce the extra 25% in 2007 to zero in 2010.  Now, the individual members of the coops have pressured their boards into attempting to cancel the agreement in the Council to allow them to make some money from the surplus grapes and wine.  The issue will be discussed at the end of the week in the Council.

To satisfy your curiosity, I have to say that most winemakers are pleased with the quality of this year’s harvest.  Although Rioja was plagued by a drought all summer, the subsoil in the vineyards had accumulated enough water throughout the winter and no rain fell during picking.  In addition, throughout September and the first three weeks of October, warm days and cool nights allowed the grapes to ripen with no risk of rot.  However, as baseball great Yogi Berra once said, “It ain’t over till it’s over.”

More about the economics of the 2009 harvest in my next post.

 

Catalonia forbids the happy hour

One of Spain’s main daily newspapers, El País, published an article today that left me in a state of shock.  Catalonia, a Spanish region that includes Barcelona, arguably Spain’s hippest and most progressive city, has passed a law forbidding the happy hour, which was described in the article as ‘the undercover promotion of alcoholic drinks in some bars and discos…during which two drinks were offered for the price of one’. The article goes on to say that if the current health minister has her way, this rule will go into effect in the entire country and while a far cry from prohibition, is cause for alarm.

Wait a minute.  This is Spain, a country of fun-loving, irreverent prople whose right to a few drinks after work is as sacred as college football on fall Saturdays.  Not letting bars promote drinks to get some business in a country that is suffering from 18% unemployment and is widely predicted to be the last European country to emerge from the current economic crisis?

Now, I’m not saying irresponsible drinking, just the right to promote your business.

Even the USA, whose citizens are regarded by many Spaniards as straight-laced puritans, leaves the happy hour alone (for those of legal drinking age, of course). What would campus life, or for that matter, life in any city and town be on Friday afternoon after a hard week in class or at work without the means to let one’s hair down a little?

El País suggests that forbidding the happy hour means that henceforth, the government decrees that all hours are unhappy, something that Spain cannot afford, given the current state of the economy.

This is not the first time a Spanish health minister has taken a swipe at the drinks trade in Spain and the furor that Elena Salgado  (now the economy minister, go figure) caused was swiftly countered by the unanimous reaction of wineries, distilleries, brewers, distributors and restaurants. Ms. Salgado backed down on direct orders from the president of the government.

I say “long live the happy hour!” Spain deserves to be happy.

Potatoes Riojan style

Last Saturday was my birthday so my wife decided that we were going to have a party at our summer house near Santander. Since most of our neighbors are from Bilbao, and consequently, Rioja lovers, we took  a healthy supply of wine (three cases of 12 for a party of 16) and prepared ourselves for a day of fun.  The party started at 1 PM and lasted until midnight.  I understand that several videos and pictures were taken of the event (I don’t remember) but haven’t seen them to be able to decide if they’re You Tube-worthy or not. You, the faithful readers of Inside Rioja, will have a ringside seat!

A marathon like this begs for careful preparation, so we decided to feed the crowd with a staple of Riojan cuisine, potatoes with spicy sausage, called ‘patatas a la riojana’ everywhere in Spain except in Rioja itself, where we call them ‘patatas con chorizo’.

This is the perfect party meal for several reasons:  it’s loaded with carbs to provide energy to keep dancing for hours, it fills your stomach to delay the absorption of the wine into the bloodstream and it’s damn tasty.

This type of food (called ’spoon food’ – ‘cocina de cuchara’ in Spanish – has always been popular in Spain.  Imagine what life was like in the country 100 years ago.  You awoke before dawn, had a full meal including a bottle of wine, followed by chores until about 10 AM when you had a big mid-morning snack (see a previous post about ‘almuerzo’) with another bottle of wine, more chores, followed by lunch and more wine, more chores, dinner and more wine and to bed when the sun went down.  Sociologists reckon that the average Spanish farmer drank three bottles of wine and a copious amount of food every day to provide enough calories to manage the hard work.

Energy food like potatoes with spicy sausage, lentils and chickpeas, made like stews and eaten with a tablespoon, were served almost every day.

This tradition remains today, as people are going back to the culinary habits of their grandparents because of these dishes’ simplicity and downright good taste.  As a matter of fact, Rioja’s best-known restaurant, Echaurren in Ezcaray (http://www.echaurren.com) is actually two restaurants side-by-side:  mother Marisa Sanchez’ traditional dining room where generations of diners have enjoyed her traditional northern Spanish cuisine and son Francis Paniego’s avant-garde dining room, where many of his mother’s dishes are turned inside out (notably his rendition of potatoes with spicy sausage, served as a multilayered purée in a conical martini glass).

More about this amazing restaurant in a future post.

Hungry yet?  Here’s a recipe for potatoes with spicy sausage.  Please bear in mind that all measurements are approximate and can be corrected.

Ingredients for 6:

• 1,5 kilos (about 3,5 lb. of potatoes (not the kind used for frying – note from my wife)
• 2 tablespoons of extra virgin olive oil
• 3 cloves of garlic
• 2 teaspoons of spicy red paprika
• 6 pieces of chorizo, each about 1 inch long
• an onion
• 1 bay leaf

Peel the potatoes and soak them in cold water.

Peel and fry the cloves of garlic in a small frying pan in the olive oil.  As soon as the garlic takes on a golden color, sprinkle in the paprika. Then pour this mixture into a pot, adding about 36 ounces of water (the contents of two empty bottles of wine, for the mathematically challenged).  Add the peeled onion, the bay leaf and the chorizo, which shouldn’t be too dry.

When this comes to a boil, lower the temperature, cover the pot and cook slowly for an hour.

Preparation of the potatoes (VERY important):  They should not be sliced, but rather ‘broken’ (‘cachado’ in Riojan) by inserting a knife about 3/4 through and twisting the knife so a piece of potato breaks off.  This, I’m told, keeps the starch inside the potato rather than letting it leach out when the potato is sliced. Break the potatoes into pieces about 1 1/2 inches in diameter (a’ hunk’)

Add the potatoes to the pot and, if there’s not enough water to cover everything, add more until it does.  Add a little salt (careful!  the chorizo is salty).

Cook in the covered pot for about 45 minutes or until the potatoes are soft but a little firm. 

If you want a thicker stew, mash one of the potatoes with a fork and stir into the rest.

Serve in soup bowls with some spicy green peppers (‘guindillas’) on the side.  Some people here will hold a ‘guindilla’ in one hand and take a bite from time to time while others will chop  theirs up and mix it into the stew.  I prefer the latter.

My wife, who refused to help me with the recipe because like all experienced chefs, never measures anything, preferring to fly by the seat of her pants, mentioned that she slowly fries the onion and garlic, puts them into a blender and then adds the mix to the stew, as she thinks that non-Spaniards won’t like to eat a piece of onion and much less, a piece of garlic.

To be a real Riojan, enjoy a healthy portion of this stew with a few glasses of red Rioja, turn on the TV and watch the football game. You’ll probably fall asleep, though!

The ‘Best Of’ Wine Tourism awards

Wine tourism is starting to jump in Rioja.  After years of thinking that opening to tourists was an unnecessary expense, winery owners here have finally realized that it’s not only a great way to sell wine but also to build relationships with  customers and teach them about wine culture.  This is especially important in Spain, where per capita consumption of wine is decreasing year after year and young people show little interest in our product.

Enter the Great Wine Capitals Global Network, made up of Bilbao/Rioja, Bordeaux, Cape Town, Firenze, Mainz/Rheinhessen, Mendoza, Porto and San Francisco/Napa Valley.  Founded in 1999,  one of its aims is to promote tourism, especially wine tourism, among its members.   The Network created the ‘Best Of’ wine tourism awards in 2004 to honor the best wine tourism initiatives in several categories.  Each member city organizes its local award contest, with the winners in each category competing among themselves for the international awards.

The awards have been a huge success, drawing a lot of attention, both to the winners and to the network.

Bilbao/Rioja celebrated its 2010 ‘Best Of’ winners at aceremony held at the historic Citadel in Pamplona on October 1.

The winners are:

Accommodation:  Hotel Hospedería Villa de Ábalos (http://www.hotelvilladeabalos.com) 

Architecture, Parks and Gardens:  Compañía Vinícola del Norte de España (http://www.cvne.com)

Art and Culture:  Finca Valpiedra (http://www.familiamartinezbujanda.com)

Innovative Experiences and Sustainable Wine Tourism Practices:  Bodegas Muga (http://www.bodegasmuga.com)

Restaurant: Remenetxe (http://www.remenetxe.com)

Winery Tourism Services: Rioja Alavesa Wine Route (http://www.rutadelvinoderiojaalavesa.com)

The international winners will be announced at an awards ceremony during the annual meeting of the network in Bordeaux on November 1.

For more information about the Great Wine Capitals Global Network, follow this link:

http://www.greatwinecapitals.com

CVNE, 130 years old and still going strong

The new world wine trade, led by the Australians, has gotten a lot of mileage from the statement ‘We make wine to consumer tastes, while the old world makes wine to suit the winery’.  Last week, the fallacy of that statement was driven home to me once again at a tasting featuring the wines of CVNE (pronounced CU-NAY)

 CVNE (short for the tongue twisting ‘Compañía Vinícola del Norte de España’) was founded in1879 by two brothers from Bilbao, Raimundo and Eusebio Real de Asúa and is now run by the fifth generation of the founding family.  This in itself is an outstanding accomplishment, as most family companies are bankrupted by the third generation (as they say in Spain, the inspired founders build the company, their children maintain the business and the grandchildren ruin it). CVNE is one of a number of wineries founded in the mid- and late 19th century, among which are Marqués de Riscal, Marqués de Murrieta, Federico Paternina, AGE, Bodegas Riojanas, La Rioja Alta, Bodegas Bilbaínas, Bodegas Franco-Españolas, R. López de Heredia Viña Tondonia, Bodegas Montecillo and Martínez Lacuesta.

 To return to my original point, you don’t survive 100 years in business if you don’t give your customers what they want, and what Rioja lovers in Spain want is wine that you can drink with a meal.

 Rioja’s most important market has always been northern Spain, notably the Basque Country, Cantabria, Asturias and Galicia, in addition to La Rioja itself.  Here, fish was and is a staple of our daily diet and the light, elegant style of a traditional Rioja is perfect with fish as well as vegetables and lamb, products easily available to us.

 The arrival of concentrated, tannic, high-in-alcohol wines, designed to win medals at tastings and to humor wine writers to Rioja’s major market, the United Kingdom produced a reaction in our region that was at first an imitation of the new world style and mostly criticized by journalists. Rioja has gradually evolved into what I call a ‘more powerful elegance’ than Riojas from the 1970s and 1980s but nonetheless recognizeable as Rioja and just as good with either meat or fish.

 CVNE is a prime example of this enduring philosophy.  Its brands Viña Real, Imperial and Monopole are found on practically every restaurant wine list in Spain.  In fact, if the company has a weakness, it has been its overwhelming strength in the Spanish market and lack of presence internationally.  The owners of the company have addressed this by hiring two of Rioja’s most dynamic export managers, Óscar Urrutia and José Luis Ripa from Bodegas Martínez Bujanda and El Coto de Rioja respectively.

 My favorite wine from the tasting, Imperial reserva 2004, showed a medium garnet color, stewed red and black fruit with well-integrated oak and elegant tannins on the nose, with medium to high acidity and firm fruit in the mouth. With 13,5% alcohol, it is more powerful than an Imperial from the 70s which probably had 12% or 12,5% and somewhat softer tannins, but it goes perfectly with food and would no doubt be recognized as a CVNE wine by the founders of the company.

 A perfect example of a business philosophy designed to last one hundred years!