Rioja Paired | Episode 2: Alta | Explore Rioja’s Wine Culture, Savor Pintxos, and Discover History

I'm Marty Buckley, a native of Birmingham, Alabama, who moved halfway across the world for a love of Spanish cuisine. Now, I'm traveling the Rioja region to discover the one thing Spaniards take even more seriously than their food, their wine. Located in north-central Spain along the River Ebro, Rioja is about 210 square miles of ideal winemaking territory. That means over 600 wineries and wine growers are packed into an area about half the size of Los Angeles. The region is divided into three large zones, each with its own terroir, personality, and unique wines to discover. I'm Marty Buckley, an award-winning author, chef, and expert on Spanish and Basque cuisine. Today, I'll be visiting the Rioja Alta region, known for its cooler climate. Logroño is the capital of La Rioja and the largest city of Rioja Alta. Logroño's history is marked by its strategic location, its role in the Reconquista, its significance on the Camino de Santiago, and its enduring legacy as a center of wine production. These elements have shaped Logroño into a vibrant city with a rich cultural heritage and a robust economy centered around viticulture and tourism. Logroño is famous for a lot of things, but Calle Laurel is everyone's favorite spot to visit. It's one of the most famous streets for poteo, going from bar to bar and drinking wine and eating pinchos. My favorite activity. Today, I'm getting a personal tour of Calle Laurel's bars from Michelin-starred chef, Iñaki Murúa, whose restaurant, Icaro, is a great example of the evolution of local cuisine. Iñaki has invited me to his restaurant later to try some of his food and wine pairings. This is like a gastronomic hub, right? I always say that this is the city's gastronomic hub. It's like a meeting point for the people in the area, but for the people outside, it's like a touristic gastronomic hub that they have to go to, yes or yes, right? Here, there are people who don't hang out with anyone and suddenly you meet people and you go for a drink. The tradition of tapas, of pinchos, of tapas, is very linked to drinking wine. Exactly. I always say one thing, here it's cheaper to drink wine than water. And it's true. And also good wines, high-quality wines, right? And how many pinchos, how many rounds of wine can you drink? How many wines are you able to drink? That's the question, you know? Or how many pinchos are you able to eat? I haven't done the test, we do it this way. This is a street to do it, you know? This is the funnest way to eat and drink in the whole world. Socializing, alternating, eating, drinking, it's culture, right? I mean, I'm going to guess, the specialty is the champriolet. This looks so good. It smells amazing. I'm so glad we've come here. No, no, not here. For these families who don't feel well. As good as our pinchos tasted, the wine pairings might have been even better. Young, fruity reds were a perfect complement to the small bites on Calle Lauren. What we're going to eat is a morcilla with peppers. In La Rioja, there's a lot of tradition, a lot of people. When people were hungry, they always had a pig at home. Because you could get all the food you could from a pig. You could make chorizos, you could take advantage of everything. What wine are you going to serve us? A little bit of the morcilla. It's early in the morning, isn't it? Well, we're going to have a little bit of a drink, because before, the wine was all mixed up in the... In the field, right? Cheers. Cheers, and more than welcome to La Rioja. You know that La Rioja is your home. That's right. That's right, right? That's how you do it. It smells so good. For any lover of wine, all roads lead to Aro, the capital of Rioja. The town is famous for its wine bars, bodegas, and vineyards, all selling locally produced, world-famous Rioja wine. In other words, it's my kind of place. This is the wine village. Our Romans taught us how to elaborate wines. When the French winemakers came here, they taught us something new. And they got associated with a lot of winemakers and businessmen from the area to produce wines to send to Europe, mainly. Our economic development due to the wine business here at the end, second half of the 19th century, was so incredible that London was the first city in Europe with lights, Paris was the second one, and Aro was the third one. Our wines are incredible, incredible. I hope you understand now much better the train station history and also our own history. Well, I'll be back soon, don't worry. Okay. I'll take care of you when you come back. Thank you. Hi. Hola. ¿Qué tal? Buenas tardes. Encantada. Encantado, Manuela. Un placer. Thank you. De nada. Esto es increíble. At the winery, we have a peculiar way of working. One of the distinguishing elements of the Bougainvillea winery is having the whole process of oak elaboration. And this somehow forces us to have our own tonnage, which allows us to control the whole process of barrel elaboration and also the maintenance and renovation of the wood deposits. Well, I'd like to know a bit about how this is done. Well, I think that in this case, I'm going to introduce you to Gustavo, who is in charge of the tonnage. I also trust the family. I'm going to start by lifting a bell-shaped bar to be able to carry it. All by hand? All by hand. Perfect. We put it like this, and we start lifting the barrel. Oh, okay. This is French oak, and this is porous porcine, which is what makes the general micro-oxygen. How long have you been doing this? Well, 24 years. I've been here with the family for 24 years. Look, to make a barrel, it takes about seven hours for one person to carry it. Oh, wow. If we close it first, it takes half an hour, and after half an hour, it would be on fire. So, here in Bougainvillea, do you have control of the whole process? Yes, because, as I mentioned before, we go to the forest, and we have all the civilian land from all over the country. When it's out of France, it's burning, and you can see that the doors are closing. Wow, cool. Yes, that's it. Perfect. Perfect, I said. Wow, so cool. So, I'm closing the barrel. You can lower it a little bit more. Okay, awesome. Oh, this is heavy. Ardo may be known for its wine, but the food is no slouch either. I'm heading to one of my favorite restaurants, the Michelin-starred Nublo, known for its inventive menu and exceptional wine cellar. We usually start with a white wine because it would go a little better than the first dishes. We usually continue with a red wine and finish with a dessert for the desserts. The oxtail was paired with an incredible Rioja Reserva. The rich, full-bodied structure really held its own against that amazing dish. Next, I had a glass of Ramirez de Ganuza, a barrel of fermented white from 2011, with scallops that I will be dreaming about for years to come. At Nublo, the food and wine just kept on coming, each bite and sip better than the last. Yeah, it's a little bombolini, a little donut. I am so full. That meal was amazing. Every wine that we had had this gorgeous story behind it, from the Rioja, from here, just like the produce. It was delicious. Today, I'm excited to head to Vivanco, a winery and a museum that has 4,000 square meters full of wine-related art and history. I'm going to meet Santi. He's the fourth generation of this winery, and he's the curator behind this amazing museum. I guess it's normal that a region with thousands of years of winemaking history has an entire museum dedicated to it. So the wine is closely related to art. Yes, this work by Miro, which is called El Trovador, El Azrequín, is the breeding wine of Vivanco. The label carries this work. And that's the party, the triumph, the whole celebration. I inherited it from my mother, the love for art, and my brother, the wine. This is the Vivanco winery. As you can see, it's all underground. The temperature is all year round. This is an aperitif. Vivanco, Blanco Vivanco. It's a white wine that has the traditional variety of white Rioja, which is Viura, but it's also complemented with minority varieties of Rioja, Tempranillo Blanco, and Maturanga Blanca. And this is the first wine, it's the white one, but Diego, I invite you to eat, so we can try more wines. Yes, I will accept your invitation happily. Thank you. Cheers. This traditional Spanish stew gets its striking color from the chorizo settling into the broth. Mmm. So good. It really is so good. I'm not acting. We paired it with an 80% Tempranillo wine, which was 100% delicious. With a long history and a varied geography, here, wine is more than just a drink. It's the economic engine of the region. Visitors flock to Rioja, not just for the wine, but also to try the cuisine and to see the architecture and art. Rioja is the perfect wine and food pairing, an example of tradition meeting innovation. Rioja is a very small territory, but it has an incredible richness. It has many Michelin-starred restaurants. We are, in Spain, the autonomous community that has the highest average of Michelin-starred restaurants per inhabitant. Wine and gastronomy are very cultural. From a very young age, we are invited here to socialize around a table, around the wine culture, to visit wineries, to go to bars. It's very rooted. I think that identity is part of the Spanish brand. I think that we have been known thanks to the efforts of many families who have followed a fantastic tradition and who have made Rioja, wine and gastronomy go hand in hand. The festival may be over, but the tasting has just begun. I'm heading to Icaro to enjoy a meal with chef Iñaki Murúa. And that word, enjoy, might be a bit of an understatement. I'm going to accompany you with some enokis, which is a cultivation mushroom. You're missing a green one. The dogs that I told you about before, the river dogs. So, the dish would be like this. And the only thing that would be missing would be to add the sauce. A little bit of sauce. A little bit of the sweet potato. It looks so good. A little bit of the other sweet potato. It is so good. So crunchy. I'm serious, it is so good. Super crunchy on top, super tender on the bottom. Very tasty. I've been to Rioja countless times, but there's still so much I don't know about its history. So who better to guide us than José Luis Lapuente, the general manager of the Consejo Regulador DOCA Rioja. José Luis is the gatekeeper of Rioja's rich tradition, balancing the region's storied past with a vision for the future. And what better place than the monasteries of Suso and Yuso? This is where, 500 years ago, monks carefully documented history and laid the foundation for Rioja's legacy. The Suso Monastery Scriptorium was a powerhouse of medieval Spain, producing priceless manuscripts like the Emilianense Codex, one of the earliest known examples of written Spanish. Within these codices, these codexes, we find the first complex text in Spanish. There's a poet in the vicinity, Gonzalo de Berceo, who makes an ode to wine, which already shows us that wine has been present in our region for thousands of years. And Rioja is about to celebrate its 100th anniversary as a winemaking region, right? For us, it's important that it's a future project and we have to add value arguments that make us attractive. We talk about sustainability, about protection against climate change and measures that counteract its effects, but also about the protection of this marvellous landscape. We believe we have the best environment to make a quality wine, which is this spectacular landscape and region. That's why, in the end, we all have to commit and all Riojans are ambassadors of the region. Well, you're a very good ambassador. Thank you very much for taking me to this spectacular place. Okay, I'm not much of a morning person, but for a sunrise, wine tasting in a hot air balloon, I thought I'd make an exception. Little did I know I was not just along for the ride. They put me right to work. I have to admit that I'm a little scared, but this is amazing and gorgeous and I've never seen anything like it. I'm scared. It's like an ocean. We are currently floating over the Rioja Alta, which is the highest zone of the Rioja and the grapes here mature later, and so that means a wine with really great aging potential. I can really say I love a good rosé by the pool, at the beach, but I've never had one at this altitude in a hot air balloon. We have a rosé from Rioja Alta with Compranillo grapes, Ganache Pinta grapes, and it really shows the diversity of this region. This is incredible. Oh my God. Wow. As much as I'd love to stay, there's so much more Rioja to explore. Join me next time as I travel to Rioja Oriental, meaning the eastern region. There is more food to eat, more people to meet, and much, much more wine to drink. Salud.