Rioja Spain
It is a shame that there is sometimes to be discovered the sort of bickering between Regulatory bodies and Winemakers (see St. Emillon 2006) that makes a Saturday sitting in parliament look both sensible and civil. Things change, often they need to. Some people like it, some people don't. Decisions are made which are not always popular. If it all sounds a little too familiar then the question remains, do the changes improve things and by whose barometer? Time and history, as ever, will be the judge of that.
Rioja, located in Northern Spain, is a wine producing region which boasts arguably the most illustrious history of all the wine producing regions of the world. Towards the end of last year The Rioja DOC underwent several significant changes, quite a step for a region whose quality in the past has been classified by something as base as how longs it's wines spend in wooden barrels.
Of great interest is the decision to allow Rioja wines to be labelled after the village where the grapes are grown, an exciting step in the direction of a Burgundian model though a potential problem of this is that there are close to one hundred and fifty villages whose names could be used for idendification purposes. The wine geek in me might dribble at the prospect of tasting my way through hundreds of different wines trying to locate the delicate nuances of each individual village, but the more casual consumer might turn a little cross-eyed before they have even poured a glass. Perhaps the hope is that a handful of these villages could reveal themselves as exceptional, again a la Burgundy. Will the wines of Arenzana de Arriba soon be as world famous as the wines of Nuits- St-Georges? A bottle of Lopez de Heredia Vina Tondonia GR 1961 sells for about two hundred and fifty pounds a bottle, the same vintage of the fabelled Romanee-Conti goes for close to nine thousand pounds a bottle. One feels there is a long way to go.
Another decision that was made is to to allow white wines produced from single varietals to be labelled as Rioja and at first look this makes much more sense. The classic, old school, white Rioja. Viura, Malvasia plus plenty of wood and no small amounts of oxidation is not a style for everyone. The likes of Chardonnay or Verdejo should no longer be seen as imposters in the region and defining them clearly on a label will only help the consumer. Clean and contemporary is the order of the day, not orange and sherry-like. But it seems Rioja will always fight this particular, internal battle. Tradition versus Modernisation, the Status Quo versus the revolutionaries. Such issues seem to trundle on and on, however, there does not have to be a winner or a loser, just let there be compromise and respect.