Winery Tours Part V: Rioja

While we were in Bordeaux and Basque we figured why not dip into Rioja for a bit and see some bodegas. Actually, the part of Rioja we stayed in is also still part of Basque country. We stayed at Marqués de Riscal in El Ciego with the hotel designed by Frank Gehry (Bilbao Guggenheim, Seattle EMP, Dancing House in Prague, the pavilion in Chicago's Millennium Park, and much more) so we toured their wine facility first. Hello. Huge! Mind-bogglingly large. They call it the "city of wine".

There seem to be enough stainless steel fermentation tanks to fill a football field or more. The place was impeccably clean and so hard to grasp the size. The barrel rooms are under the fermentation tank rooms and they were massive too. The bottles are stored in the "new" and "old" areas of the winery. The hotel has 3 pillars of support and they go into the new bottle storage area that holds over 3.5 million bottles of wine. Yes, that is correct. 

What we learned about Rioja is that they age the wines for consumers rather than release them and make the consumer age it for 10 years like Bordeaux. The wine is often aged 3-6 years in barrels and again that long in the bottle before it is released. Big wineries like this also keep a lot of older vintages forever. The bottling line area was bigger than some wineries we've seen. The bottles sit naked until ordered and then are cleaned and "dressed" with labels and capsules just before leaving the facility. On the tour we even saw photos of the hotel as it was built along with a scale model of the plans (with an outdoor pool – the real hotel has an indoor pool).

We visited López y Heredia Viña Tondonia which is old school but very large. They have wooden fermentation tanks (other we visited do too but they usually get new ones every 20-30 years) that are over 100 years old. Apparently there is a crust build up inside. They also have a really long bottle cave that was carved for years. All the bottles have cobwebs all over them and there is mold on the walls and the barrels. Supposedly it's the good mold, but I prefer the places that keep things clean. They age all their wines for 5+ years – even the whites – in oak and they are so different from anything you have probably ever tasted. Apparently whites used to be the more prestigious wine and were even taxed higher than reds. So much so that people would open their whites, pour in some red, and pass through customs paying the lower tax. 
 
They think this is why Spanish use the word 'tinto' (tinted) to describe red wine rather than the word red like the rest of the world. Basically this is a family business that uses patience to age all wines and they make ALL of their own barrels. Their tasting room was built by a now famous architect (she wasn't when they hired her – I think this is her) who is so busy she can't finish the other project they hired her for – the underground tasting room. I would highly recommend finding and trying a white due to the novelty of the taste. I wasn't that big a fan of the reds – perhaps because of the lack of cleanliness in the barrels, aging rooms, etc.

We visited the town of Laguardia which was very cool. We visited Bodega El Fabulista which is one of two remaining wineries in the town that do all the vinification and aging within the town walls. The town has hundreds of underground cellars that used to produce wine. That being said, this was the WORST tour we have ever taken – nothing even comes close. The guide seemed to have a bad attitude and was arrogant and haughty. She often didn't understand people's questions and gave little or wrong information to people. 
 
In addition, there was one fluent Spanish couple along that she talked to in Spanish thinking none of us could understand but (yo entiendo un poco) she was totally dissing the rest of the tour for being dumb and asking no questions – yet she was the one with the abrupt & incorrect answers that was encouraging no questions. It was totally insane, but we were also underground and couldn't escape. We saw two of the other couples afterwards in different places and both of them didn't like the tour either. This place also ferments with the stems which is rare (they have to be perfect to be used and even then in moderation) and the young wine was bitter. It was terrible. El Crapola.

Back onto better tours, we visited La Rioja Alta which was another large place. They called the bottle storage location the 'Bottle Dormitory' which I thought was cool – that and the fact there were 2.5 million bottles chilling out in there. Yikes. They make 5 levels of wine with these years (2+2,3+3,4+4,5+5,6+6) (oak+bottle) and they release them when ready to drink although the Gran Reservas (12 years) can obviously be held onto longer if you wish.
 
Our final visit was recommended by the concierge who said it was his favorite winery – Remirez de Ganuza. It's smaller than those above but certainly a decent size operation. The place was immaculately clean (bonus) and Miguel gave us a great tour including giving us a production dvd of the process when we left. Miguel had spent 2 years making this dvd when he could get time with the owner/winemaker and then he ended up being hired on. The dvd shows great details about the process. This is the first winery that we have heard of that uses the following process: they separate the bunches of grapes into 'shoulders' and 'tips' (or 'feet'). The tops of the bunches (shoulders) which get more sun are used for the Gran Reserva and the bottoms (tips) are used for the second wine. This was very interesting. 

In addition, in the olden days of winemaking after the fermentation bins were drained, the winemakers would go home for the night and when they returned more wine was available that was highly concentrated that seeped through overnight. This was called trasnocho. This winery puts a bag into the fermentation bins and fills it with water to force out this liquid and they use it to vinify a wine they call Trasnocho. First of all, the wine we did taste was the best Rioja we tasted on a tour. We didn't try the Trasnocho here and it isn't currently exported, but that night we found it on our menu so we ordered a bottle and it was delicious. What a way to end the journey.