Winecast: Rioja

Hello everybody and welcome to The Wine Cast. It's back to Spain with this cast to talk about a region within that country, and this time it's the region that's likely to be Spain's most famous, Rioja. Most of the wine region of Rioja is located in a portion of the Spanish province of La Rioja in north-central Spain, and the wine region is essentially a portion of the valley of the Ebro River that straddles the aforementioned province of La Rioja, as well as small parts of the neighboring provinces of Navarra and the Basque country province of Alava. Thanks to its inland location, the climate of Rioja, speaking in general terms, is best described as continental, with a Mediterranean influence that helps take the edge off the extremes of temperature that inland locations like this see, and that reaches Rioja via the Ebro River, much the way that maritime influences reach into the Loire Valley, thanks to the Loire River. The region is divided into three sub-areas, Rioja Baja, or lower Rioja, a hot and dry low-lying flat area, Rioja Alta, or upper Rioja, a hillier, cooler climate area, and Rioja Alavesa, a part of upper Rioja with similar features to that area located in the province of Alava. In addition to different temperature and climate profiles, each of these areas has unique topographic and soil profiles, all of which affect the grapes grown there in different ways, and historically wines in Rioja have tended to be made from blends of grapes sourced from these different areas. Speaking of history, though Rioja is currently an important player in Spanish wine, it really didn't come into its own until more or less recently. Though viticulture goes back millennia in Spain, with Phoenician and Greek settlers transporting grape vines to their colonies along the coast of the Iberian Peninsula, the grape came relatively late to the inland areas of central Spain, and then centuries of Muslim presence in the area, with that tradition's prohibition on alcohol consumption, also set up barriers to the development of viticulture in the region. When wine growing did become extensive during the 13th through the 19th centuries, the wine had an extremely rustic character, driven by field blends of both red and white grapes that were often fermented via semi-carbonic maceration. By the mid-19th century, a number of local producers had already begun visiting France and learning from French wine producers in an effort to improve the quality of local wines, but things really turned a corner for quality production in Rioja later in that century, when phylloxera drove French winemakers to as yet unaffected areas where they could continue to apply their craft. Most of the winemakers that made it to Rioja as part of this exodus were from Bordeaux, and they brought with them techniques and technologies that they used back home to make their wines, including the use of 225 liter oak barrels for aging. Another milestone toward quality production took place in 1925, when a Consejo Regulador, or regulatory council, was established to set up and oversee rules of production for wines bearing the Rioja name. This event in Rioja parallels a similar event that happened in the same year in Chateauneuf-du-Pape, in France's Rhone Valley, with producers in both areas acquiring a production code for wines made in their regions. Also like Chateauneuf, Rioja's rules of production anticipated a future nationwide rollout of the denomination of origin scheme, into which both Rioja and Chateauneuf would later be grandfathered. Finally, in 1991, Rioja became the first region elevated to the highest regional classification in the Spanish system, the DOCA, or the Classified Denomination of Origin, an honor it currently shares with only one other Spanish region, Priorat. When it comes to the grapes that are grown in Rioja, red is king, with about 93% of total acreage under vine devoted to red grapes, and among those, the top dog is Tempranillo, that takes up about 80% of total vineyard acreage in the region. Tempranillo is the most planted of the five permitted red grapes for still wines in the region, with the others being Grenache, or Garnacha in Spanish, Graciano, a deeply pigmented aromatic red grape that shows high acid, Masuelo, known elsewhere in Spain as Cariñena, or as Carignan in France, and an indigenous grape, Maturana Tinta, or Maturano. Tempranillo is very closely associated with Rioja, and as we'll see, it plays a very dominant part in all red Riojas, but its role wasn't always as big as it is now, and as recently as the 1980s, only about 30% of Rioja's vineyard land was planted to with the other permitted varieties playing a much larger role in the wines. Whites are grown in Rioja as well, but they only make up around 7% of all plantings, and the big dog here without any contest is Viura, better known throughout the rest of Spain as Macabeo, one of the three primary grapes used in Cava production. Prior to 2008, when additional grapes were added to the list of permitted varieties for the first time in 83 years, Viura was one of three permitted white grapes, along with Garnacha Blanca and another varietal called Malvasia Riojana. About 10,600 of the 10,900 or so acres of white grapes in Rioja, so about 97%, are currently planted to Viura with the remaining 300 acres taken up by the other two whites I just mentioned, along with six additional white grapes after 2008. Three of these new grapes are local varieties, Maturana Blanca, Tempranillo Blanco, and Turuntes, not to be confused with the Toruntes grown in Argentina, and three of them are the French varieties Chardonnay and Sauvignon Blanc, and the Spanish variety Verdejo from the nearby Crueda region. With so many available grapes to work with, it should come as no surprise that Rioja's tend pretty overwhelmingly to be blends, both red and white, and it's not just different varietals that get blended, but there's a strong tradition of areas of the region, Rioja Alta, Baja, and Alavesa, into a single batch or cuvee. That said, the production regulations do allow for the possibility of a 100% Tempranillo, and that's becoming more common, as is the practice of producing cuvees from grapes grown in a single sub-region or even a single vineyard in Rioja. Speaking of the production regulations, they don't specify any percentage requirements for how much of a given permitted varietal can or must be in each bottle, but they do state that Tempranillo and Viura should be the dominant grapes in red and white blends respectively, and they also specify that if Chard, Sauv Blanc, and or Verdejo, that is the non-local permitted white grapes, are used in a white wine, they shouldn't be the dominant varietals. Roses must be made from a minimum of 25% permitted red grapes, and again, if the three non-local grapes are used, they shouldn't dominate the blend. So what's with all this stuff about blend domination? Well, as far as I can tell from reading the production rules on the Rioja Regulatory Council's official website, what's important for a Rioja to be called a Rioja is that its organoleptic or sensory properties be consistent with what people think of when they think of Rioja, and that means that a Rioja should taste and smell like a red wine made from Tempranillo or a white wine from Viura, and that it should definitely not taste and smell like a wine made from non-local grapes like Chard, Sauvignon Blanc, and Verdejo. So for the Regulatory Council, it's less about having a specific percentage of certain grapes than it is about producing a wine with certain characteristics. This approach works in no small part because, as with other top quality wine designations throughout the EU, each wine is submitted to a tasting panel to confirm its organoleptic properties before receiving the Rioja designation. Speaking of grapes and blending in Rioja, here's a fun fact for you. According to the Regulatory Council's production rules, up to 5% of a red Rioja can be made from grapes other than the five permitted grapes, a number that goes up to 15% if the wine is made by whole cluster fermentation. What's up with that? Well, it turns out that all of those expat French winemakers in the 19th century brought some vines with them along with their French know-how, including, among others, Cabernet Sauvignon, and some of these vines, now grafted and replanted after Phylloxera hit Rioja, are still there in tiny amounts and occasionally make their way into blends, though they can't be identified on the bottle's label. So you'd be surprised what you might find in a bottle of Rioja. Finally, you can't talk about Rioja without talking at least a little bit about aging, which is something that Spaniards take seriously in general, but especially so here. The tradition in Rioja has been to age wines for a long time on American oak, with its characteristically strong vanilla as well as coconut and dill notes, and then bottle the wine when the producer felt it was at a peak age. How long could some of these wines sit in barrel? Quite a while, actually, with a famous example being the 1942 Marques de Murrieta y Gai Gran Reserva that sat in oak for around 41 years until its release in 1983. As remarkable as some wines aged like this could be, there is such a thing as too much aging, and more recently producers have taken a lighter, though still significant, approach to time in barrel, and more and more often those barrels are being made out of the more gently perfumed French oak. In terms of legal requirements for aging, Rioja and its neighbor, Ribera del Duero, follow a stricter version of the general Spanish three-tiered system of crianza, reserva, and gran reserva wines. Under this protocol, reds have to age a total of two, three, or five years to qualify for each tier, with a mandatory minimum amount of that aging having to happen in barrel. For whites, Rioja follows the standard protocol that's used throughout Spain that, again, requires a combination of total aging with a minimum amount of barrel time. Rosé is a rare style in Rioja, but if a Riojan rosé is aged, it'll follow the same requirements that a white does. While you aren't likely to see too many cases anymore of wines aging 40 plus years before release, producers who are known for their quality will sometimes exceed these minimum requirements by large margins. In addition to the three legally defined aging categories, you may see a few other unregulated terms on Rioja labels. Semicrianza and roble, the latter being just the Spanish word for oak, suggest that the wine receives some aging, including an oak treatment, but less than the time required to qualify for crianza status, while labeling a wine joven, or young in Spanish, implies that the wine hasn't seen any time on oak at all. Joven wines will also often, but not always, have a fairly pronounced carbonic character from having undergone semi-carbonic maceration, which was an important style historically in Rioja and still remains popular for inexpensive, easy-drinking, youthful red wines. Thanks again for joining me for another wine cast. I hope this one helped you get your head around the, at times, complicated but remarkable wine culture of Rioja, and if it did, please like and subscribe if you haven't already. Personally, I love Riojas, both reds, whites, and rosés, and though I don't usually talk about individual producers or wines, I'd love to hear from you in the comments if you have any particular favorite producers and bottles, either from Rioja or from any other regions that I have done or will do. I'm your host, the Unknown Winecaster, and I'm out. Enjoy the grape, but always enjoy it responsibly. you