Rooted in Rioja, Traditions Gain New Respect

The Pour
Rooted in Rioja, Traditions Gain New Respect

Matias Costa for The New York Times
IN AN OLD VINE, MODERN WISDOM Winemakers in Rioja, Spain, have followed ancient methods that still work, even preferring to grow grapes on bushes, not along trellises.

By ERIC ASIMOV
Published: August 11, 2009
HARO, Spain

ABUNDANT wreaths of ghostly mold hang from the ceiling like sentinels, guarding thousands of bottles of gran reserva wine deep in the cellars of the R. López de Heredia winery here in the heart of Rioja. More mold and copious cobwebs are draped over the bottles, some of which have been aging in their bins for decades.
Perhaps no winery in the world guards its traditions as proudly and steadfastly as López de Heredia does, especially in a region like Rioja, which has been swept by profound changes in the last 25 years. And yet, as fusty and as backward-looking as López de Heredia may seem, it is paradoxically a winery in the vanguard, its viticulture and winemaking a shining, visionary example for young, forward-thinking producers all over the world.
How is this possible? As López de Heredia has stayed true to its time-honored techniques in the 132 years since its inception, the rest of the wine-producing world has spent decades doggedly trying to improve what it does, only to come practically full circle, ending up where López de Heredia has been all along.
I don’t mean that anybody the world over is making wine in the style of López de Heredia. Almost alone, the winery clings to the notion that it must age its wines until they are ready to drink. Rioja requires gran reserva wines to receive a minimum of six years of aging before they can be released. The current vintage for many gran reserva producers is 2001. López de Heredia has just released gran reservas from 1991 and 1987, exquisitely graceful wines that show the lightness of texture and finesse that comes of long aging.
And these are just the red wines. López de Heredia makes white Riojas that age just as well, achieving a beautifully complex, mellow nuttiness that is a special delight. Nobody makes white Riojas like López de Heredia anymore.
Red or white, the wines are great values, starting at $25 to $50 for crianzas and reservas, which can be 10 to 20 years old. Even 20-year-old gran reservas will be under $100, a steal compared to French or Italian wines of similar age and quality.
But while López de Heredia’s wines are almost singular, its ideas about growing grapes and making wines have become increasingly influential, regardless of stylistic concerns.
For more than 50 years after World War II, the great wine regions of the world sought to modernize. Where once backbreaking labor was the only method to grow grapes, science and technology began to offer shortcuts. Growers and producers everywhere seized the chance to mechanize; to deploy chemical pesticides, herbicides and fungicides, to adopt the latest technological recommendations.
Increased knowledge was welcome, and some technology was useful. But, too late, many learned that chemicals were killing the soil, and that techniques to increase vineyard yields also diminished the quality of the grapes, just as too much technology in wineries could harm the quality of the wine. All over the wine-producing world, the brightest winemakers have set out to relearn the wisdom and techniques of their grandparents. All, except for one Rioja producer right here in Haro.
“We don’t need to, we never lost it,” said Maria José López de Heredia, who today, with her sister, Mercedes; brother, Julio César; and father, Pedro, runs the winery founded by her great-grandfather. “New technology is fine, but you can’t forget the logic of history.”
But what many in the wine-producing world have seen clearly from afar is coming more slowly to the rest of Rioja, a region in transition, where many producers are debating stylistic and viticultural issues that have long been resolved in other parts of the world.
For decades, Rioja has emphasized brand over terroir. Many of the biggest names bought grapes from different parts of the region, blending them like the big Champagne producers to make wines — often delicious wines — that fit a house style but revealed little sense of place beyond a generic sense of Rioja.
But López de Heredia, and very few others in the old guard, like Marqués de Murrieta, have always owned their own vineyards and grown their own grapes. The López wines, which come from four distinct vineyards, almost always show characteristics of their site. The reds from the Tondonia vineyard, for example, tend to be lighter and silkier than reds from the Bosconia vineyard, which are sturdier and a bit more powerful.
Today, a growing number of smaller and younger producers are, like López de Heredia, trying to show a sense of place in their wines, by gaining control of vineyards, improving their viticulture and becoming more conscious of the ideals of terroir that have long been accepted in other wine regions.
“The old producers wanted to show a brand, not a place,” said Telmo Rodríguez, who produces wine all over Spain and has recently, with a partner, opened a small, sleek winery, made of earth and old barrel staves, in the village of Lanciego east of Haro. “I want to make a wine that could show a village.”
In some ways, Mr. Rodríguez seems the antithesis of López. He prefers French oak to the traditional American oak found in the López de Heredia cellars, and he no longer uses the traditional terms crianza, reserva and gran reserva to indicate, in ascending order, the aging a wine has received before it has been released. Instead, he uses Burgundian terms — village, premier cru and grand cru — to describe his Riojas: LZ, Lanzaga and Altos de Lanzaga.
His wines are very different, too, fruity, floral and progressively dense moving up the quality scale. The Altos de Lanzaga is marked by the vanilla scent of new French oak.
Yet Mr. Rodríguez clearly respects and venerates López de Heredia. “For me, the only winery that works in an authentic way is López,” he said. “Their vineyards are still worked in a traditional way with direct links to the past.”
Driving through the gently rolling Rioja terrain, where grapes are often planted right up to the edge of the road, it is becoming harder to find vineyards planted in the older bush-vine style, their scraggly canes trained upward from thick, free-standing trunks in the shape of goblets. With the encouragement of agricultural authorities, more and more of the vines are now trained on neat rows of wire trellises, which make vineyards easier to negotiate with tractors and to harvest mechanically. Mr. Rodríguez abhors the changes, and has sought to buy old fields of bush vines, which he says are crucial to good Rioja. “We are more obsessed with authenticity than beauty,” he said.
All the grapes in the López de Heredia vineyards are grown on bush vines, even though, climbing the hill on which Tondonia is planted, one can see occasional rows of grapes on trellises. When asked about them, Ms. López de Heredia explains that tiny parcels of Viña Tondonia are owned by small growers who, over the years, have refused to sell their land to López de Heredia.
“Everything on wires is not owned by us,” she said.
Since the winery was founded 132 years ago by Don Rafael López de Heredia y Landeta, she said, each succeeding generation has adhered to the founder’s guiding principles: “old vines, low yields and careful, gentle handling.” It’s a litany that today can be heard all over the wine-producing world.
While wine has been made in the Rioja region for centuries, Rioja wine as we know it is a relatively recent phenomenon, dating from the mid-19th century. Back then, French vignerons, victimized by phylloxera, the voracious aphid that destroyed vineyards all over Europe, came to Rioja prospecting for new places to make wine.
The Bordelais taught the Spanish how to make wines in the style of Bordeaux, which emphasized long aging in barrels before release.
Today, López de Heredia may be the last Rioja winery still taking those lessons literally. Even venerable Rioja producers like Marqués de Murrieta and La Rioja Alta, which once stood with López de Heredia as bastions of tradition, have tweaked and tinkered in an effort to add a touch of modernity to their wines, hoping that rounding off the edges might make them more appealing to the critics who dispense the scores.
At Marqués de Murrieta’s 741-acre Ygay estate, just outside the city of Logroño, the grapes are planted in a mixture of bush and trellised vines. Today, V. Dalmau Cebrián-Sagarriga, who took over the estate when his father died in 1996, is on a campaign to update his wines stylistically. “We refused to change the identity,” he said. “But we added more fruit to the wine, we release the wines sooner, we use newer oak and we leave the wine in oak less time.”
The reds clearly have become darker and fruitier. Yet the 2001 Castillo Ygay gran reserva remains true to the style, graceful, light-bodied and balanced. It will be a lovely wine in 20 years.
The same cannot be said with certainty about the white Rioja. Only a few years ago, Murrieta made a white Rioja in the traditional style, like López, the wine aged in American oak from which it gained an almost coconut-like character. Now the white is aged in toasty French oak, and while it may be delicious, it is no longer distinctive.
Like many Rioja wineries, Murrieta also makes a red wine in a modern style — darker, richer, with tannins imparted by French oak. It’s called Dalmau, which Mr. Cebrián-Sagarriga calls “a modern concept of Murrieta.” It, too, is balanced and not overripe, like other versions of what many in Rioja call “alta expression” wines. With Castillo de Ygay and Dalmau, Marqués de Murrieta manages to have it both ways.
Not every producer is as careful as Murrieta to stay tethered to its traditions. With its Frank Gehry-designed hotel on its grounds, Marqués de Riscal is the new face of Rioja in many tourist brochures and guides. The winery is a huge industrial operation, making 4.5 million bottles a year. A 1958 Riscal gran reserva today is a beautiful wine, delicate and harmonious. But Riscal doesn’t make these sorts of wines anymore, opting even in its gran reservas for dark colors and big mouthfuls of fruit.
“Our technical director is very keen to protect the Marqués de Riscal identity, which I understand, but business is business,” the commercial director, Javier Ybañez Creus, told me.
At López de Heredia, there is a serenity that comes with adherence to core principles. For many years, the winery was criticized at home for being backward and old-fashioned. Appreciation came instead from its export markets.
“Acceptance overseas has people here in Spain reconsidering our wines,” Ms. López de Heredia said. “There are people who want to go back again, and we are happy to teach.”

Origin information: New York Times

La Televisión china se fija en el vino de López de Heredia

La Televisión china se fija en el vino de López de Heredia

Un equipo del canal asiático rueda un reportaje para el informativo nacional
18.06.09 - ROBERTO RIVERA HARO

El equipo de la televisión china, con María José López de Heredia en la bodega. / R. S.
La crisis tiene esas cosas. Que aprieta y complica la situación que es un primor para quien bandea con una mínima soltura y mucho más para quien se las ve y se las desea para capear el temporal. Pero que, al mismo tiempo, agudiza el ingenio y con él las fronteras, por lejos que parezcan, se desmoronan.
Empieza a advertirse en muchos sectores, obligados a buscar con mayor margen de competitividad en el exterior las ventas que se reducen de forma inevitable en el interior. Y, de un tiempo a esta parte, mucho más en el bodeguero que empieza a encontrar un mínimo desahogo en el extranjero a una caída de facturación espectacular para algunas firmas.
Otras, caso curioso, se hacen más interesantes para quienes viven lejos de esta denominación con tanto peso en el mercado internacional del vino.
A la prometedora penetración que algunas de las empresas del Barrio de la Estación y del resto de la comarca jarrera han logrado en los mercados americanos, fundamentalmente Estados Unidos y Brasil, se suma ahora el atractivo que suscita el vino del país, fundamentalmente el vino de Rioja, en el gran monstruo asiático, en el macromercado por el que se pega más de medio mundo (el medio mundo que vende al otro medio).
Escaparate inmenso
Seis minutos de reportaje televisivo. El infinito en cualquier programación de informativos. Un escapare envidiable en cualquier país. En China, seis minutos de presencia en la pequeña pantalla es como asomarse a las puertas del cielo.
Y eso, por difícil que resulte de creer, es lo que graban desde ayer en las instalaciones y en las fincas y viñedos de López de Heredia un equipo completo de la televisión china, integrado por cámara, iluminador, editor, redactores y productores, que se ha desplazado a nuestro país para hacer reportajes sobre doce bodegas españolas.
La serie, 'Jornadas en las bodegas del mundo', acaba siendo el objetivo de la firma jarrera que abrió sus puertas a los periodistas asiáticos, que se emitirá, a lo largo de tres episodios de cuarenta minutos, tanto en China como en Hong Kong y Macao.
Mucho más teniendo en cuenta que López de Heredia es una de las doce bodegas españolas, de diferentes denominaciones de origen, que han sido seleccionadas por el canal televisivo para ir confeccionando el hilo argumental de un programa que, ya desde el principio, dará que hablar.



Origen información: El Correo Digital

El desafío enológico

María José López de Heredia rompe tópicos en una singularísima cata para lomejordelvinoderioja.com


25.01.08 - A. GIL/C.SOMALO

María José López de Heredia, y al fondo una imagen de su bisabuelo, fundador de la casa. / JUAN MARÍN
Con López de Heredia, todo es relativo. Los principales axiomas enológicos de hoy no sirven cuando se descorchan los vinos de esta casa. Son únicos, singulares, propios , historia viva del Rioja que contradice el científico patrón que en las últimas décadas ha eliminado gran parte de los defectos de los vinos, pero a costa de la singularidad y de la tipicidad. María José López de Heredia caló hondo entre los aficionados con un discurso romántico, aunque también con hechos (sus vinos), en la nueva cata del club de
lomejordelvinoderioja.com y el hotel Husa, con el patrocinio del restaurante Entrevinos. López de Heredia es hoy la única bodega artesanal de España. Una casa que rompe tópicos, dirigida ya por la cuarta generación, pero que sigue fiel a los principios. El vino se hace hoy en la viña dicen los tratados de enología, pero «el nuestro se hace en la viña desde hace ya 131 años», recordó María José. El gran valor de la bodega, además de su historia, es el viñedo. Viña Tondonia, una finca de 110 hectáreas de la que exclusivamente salen sus vinos.La cataMaría José organizó la cata en dos tandas. Un rosado y cuatro tondonias blancos y tres bosconias y dos tondonias tintos. Diez vinos con el sello característico: la larga crianza. El tiempo es relativo en López de Heredia. Ninguna bodega aguanta tanto los vinos en madera y en botella para obtener una finura sólo comparable a la de algunos grandes borgoñas. El primero de los vinos es un Gran Reserva Viña Tondonia rosado de 1997, una primicia que aún no ha salido al mercado. Tiene un color rosa pálido, casi salmón (piel de cebolla) y la escasa producción se vende íntegramente en Nueva York. La cata entra ahora en el territorio de los admirados blancos de López de Heredia, que un día hicieron famosa a Rioja y que hoy prácticamente sólo la centenaria bodega de Haro mantiene. En estos momentos el blanco comercial es el Tondonia de 1987, tras una crianza en barrica incluso superior a los tintos (diez años) porque «la malvasía tenía más grado y había que refinar el vino», indica la enóloga. Empieza con un Gravonia crianza de 1998, la gama más 'joven' de la casa que presenta ya un color amarillo pajizo. La cata y, las copas, evolucionan en color y complejidad con los siguientes blancos: Un Tondonia Gran Reserva de 1990 (también primicia); otro de 1987 y una de los mitos de la noche, el Viña Tondonia de 1964. El color pajizo del Gravonia se intensifica hasta el oro intenso del último vino. Los aromas son cada vez más complejos y más intensos. «Si de algo peca el Tondonia de 1964 es de exceso de perfume, hasta el punto de que puede 'comerse' al plato». Más tópicos que caen. Los blancos de López de Heredia, de esa denostada viura que envejece como ninguna otra variedad blanca, se toman no muy fríos y son ideales con carnes blancas. Como en los tintos, la extraordinaria capacidad de envejecer sorprende. «La pregunta del millón es si los vinos actuales van a envejecer como los que tenemos en bodega». «No lo sabemos, la uva no es igual y la acidez, que es clave para el envejecimiento, va en descenso desde hace 60 años, pero con el Tondonia de 1987, por ejemplo, estamos seguros de que sí seguirá vivo muchas décadas».



Origen información: larioja.com