 |
| October 6th 2006 |
|
| Rioja: classic or modern? |
by Victor de la Serna from Spain
When produced in its traditional style, the finest Rioja is easily recognised by its aroma, flavour and taste. Some believe that this style of Rioja is in danger of being eclipsed, if not forgotten, as an international, but less personal Rioja emerges.
|
|
|
 Modern Rioja is the darling of high profile oenologists, wine writers and a public - nurtured on New World wines - that is unwilling or unable to understand the older style. Still, while the moderists get the editorial coverage, at least 90% of the Rioja made today - more than 20 million cases a year - is still vinified and aged in the traditional style. Some of this wine is sublime, but little reaches truly great heights.
Ideally, traditional Rioja comes from old, bush-pruned, vineyards at reduced yields. In contrast to the more modern styles the alcohol level is relatively moderate because the grapes are not picked at inflated levels of ripeness. These are seldom single varietal wines, but blends that add to the elegance of the predominant Tempranillo by teasing the warmth out of Garnacha, the nerve out of Graciano and the acidity out of Mazuelo. In the traditionalists' ideal world, the finest Gran Reserva are fermented in large, open casks and matured for years in old barrels made of American oak, thereby reducing their alcohol levels. Their style also shuns modern stabilisation techniques and places little emphasis on primary aromas. Their aim? Tertiary aromas, bright acidity, freshness and structure.
Traditional Rioja is often distinguished by a peculiar, 19th century style of winemaking and aging. When done with the utmost care from outstanding grapes, this traditional style yields the brilliant results of wines like Viña Tondonia from López de Heredia, Selección Especial from Montecillo, Castillo Ygay from Marqués de Murrieta, Prado Enea from Muga and 890 from La Rioja Alta.
Often slightly brick-red in colour, these wines have aromas that are never fruit driven, but rather a mature bouquet of leather, spices and forest floors. Often the trained palate notes a hint of acidity on the nose that evolves on the palate in a fresh and elegant fashion. Wellbalanced rather than overblown, it is the acidity more than the tannins that provide these wines with depth and length. Usually best after a few years in bottle, great Gran Reserva have the potential to age for several decades; but as the finesse of this style of wine has been lost on the current generation of wine drinkers, lovers of these wines tend to be older and with greater wine experience.
To be fair to the younger drinkers, however, it is quite possible that they have never had the opportunity to taste really top class traditional Rioja. Most old vines in Rioja, as in many parts of Spain, were uprooted in the 1970s and 1980s and replaced by much higheryielding clones. Apologists for more recent vintages claim that they "need more time" to show their class. In fact very few wineries still produce wines with the aging potential of the great examples of the 1950s, 1960s or 1970s. On the other hand, the best of the modernists have opened up a different avenue for Rioja: that of vineyard and fruit. Some of them, no doubt, overextract, over-concentrate and over-oak, but the finest are producing wines of great depth and structure. Despite the claims of their critics, these are wines that have all the aging capacity of great Bordeaux and, after 20 or 25 years, they acquire all the cedary, tobacco leaf suavity of traditional Rioja. As traditionalists like to say, here, too, you must show patience. After 15 years in the bottle, however it was made, great Rioja is sure to show more similarities than differences.
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
