Streets of Spain Event London 2013

Not only will temperatures be more like those we expect from our Iberian neighbour, but you can buy some fantastic meats, cheese, olives and vegetables (including some delicious dried mushrooms) DIRECT from the world-famous La Boqueria Market, a major destination for UK and US travellers as they tour Barcelona.

La Boqueria Stall – spice

La Boqueria Stall – jamon

To top it all off, you can enjoy all of this with a glass, or several, of Rioja.

Campo Viejo WInes

London already hosts the annual Rioja-focused “Tapas Fantasticas” outdoor event in June with 20 or so Rioja wineries and local tapas restaurants, and the success of this “experience” has encouraged brands to consider more such events, I’m sure.

The exclusive sponsor of the Streets of Spain event is Campo Viejo, the well-known Rioja wine brand which is now available all over the world. The range on show includes the regular Rioja ranges of young Tempranillo, Rioja Reserva and Gran Reserva, but also two Cava wines – including a rather tasty rosé.

Campo Viejo may be a large volume brand, but I tasted the range recently and was actually pleasantly surprised by the style – approachable, but with some surprisingly complex fruit and elegant tannins. I think recent vintages are more interesting than they were a couple of years ago, and they’ll probably go down well in the relaxing surroundings.

While many wine events can be off-putting because they are overly focused on wine “education”, this is a much more relaxed and informal way to soak up some atmosphere, try some wines and get to know a little bit more about Spain.

Spanish Wine Masterclass

For those with a bit of time on their hands, there are several 1-hour wine tasting masterclass sessions (but these may already be sold out, sorry!), including one where you get to blend your own Rioja wine.

Tools for Blending your own Wine

There is also a tapas lunch space which converts into a pop-up restaurant in the evening, and a cinema (if you want to escape the heat for a few minutes).

Spanish Cinema

Pop Up Restaurant

And to add a cultural aspect, they’ve even brought over “street artists” who will be creating a unique piece that will be on display throughout the event

Street Art Mural – work begins

All in all, this is a great experience, and it is good to see a big brand developing an activity that will engage a broad range of consumers.

One of these is Sombrereros Dulin, the milliners (hat shop) on Portales, the pedestrian artery of the old town.

The shop has been trading continuously since 1863, but it’s current shopfitting dates from 1912. The elegant carved  wood cabinets line the walls of the reception area where even today, the minimal window displays give way to open space for the staff to select styles, sizes and ranges just for you. It is a style of personal shopping that we rarely experience today.

I find it intriguing to find Stetsons and Panama hats in the heart of Spain’s wine heartland, but I love this shop so much, I only buy my hats here.

All smartly dressed wine tourists need to consider their headwear, don’t you agree?

My new head gear for days in the sunny vineyards tomorrow

I posted a similar collection of Rioja photos this time last year, if you need more red & gold in your life

On the whole the images are interesting, but I feel they got the music BADLY wrong. I also think they got the balance of images slightly off by showing just a little too much old sandstone buildings and limestone cliffs. Of course these dominate the landscape and make it great to visit, but I the overall impression, especially with the music, is that this is some sort of South American or “wild west” landscape, with old dusty towns, vast expanses of vine-growing plains and jagged, imposing mountains.

In fact, it is an easily travelled, gentle and culturally rich landscape with lots of modern facilities balanced with historical towns that are very much still alive.

Come and visit and see what you think

Check out some of his photos from that night. Calle Laurel is Logroño’s tapas quarter – a growing warren of streets that serve tapas, wine and beer and are a great place to hang out with friends.

Next week I will also post some of his other photos of Bilbao, Laguardia, Logroño and Dinastia Vivanco from the trip
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Not your "usual" bunch of Tempranillo grapes

Let’s get one thing straight from the start, it has nothing to do with White Zinfandel. That is a white wine made from red grapes and often in a fruity style.

Tempranillo Blanco, or White Tempranillo, is a relatively ‘new’ grape. It is the result of a natural mutation of the more common ‘red’ Tempranillo, and was discovered on a vine in a vineyard in Murillo de Rio Leza in 1988 by the owner, Jesús Galilea Esteban. DNA analysis proved that this really was tempranillo, but that a natural ‘albinism’ had affected the genes relating to the skin colour that resulted in a yellow/green skin pigmentation instead of the usual blue/purple.

You can read a few more details on the Wikipedia page, ungenerously listed under the title “Tempranillo White Mutant“

Rioja only allows a small number of “official” grapes to be used for its wines, but as this grape was effectively “born” in Rioja, they could hardly not allow it. However, it took a few years of testing by the official Rioja regulatory bodies first. They took the cutting, grew the plant, used this to take more cuttings and so on, until they had a small number of vines from which to produce grapes and test the resulting wine.

The initial results were positive, so a limited number of producers, including Bodegas Dinastia Vivanco, were allowed limit plantings of the vines as “experimental” varieties. This too was successful and finally, in 2007, Tempranillo Blanco was approved as a minority variety in white wine blends.

Of course wineries need to grow the grapes first before they can make the wines, and it takes around 3 years to mature a young vine enough to produce good grapes. However, the pioneers of this production have now started to see the benefit of the early investment and so in 2010 and 2011 some Tempranillo Blanco will start to appear in bottles of Rioja white wines, although it is still planted in tiny quantities exclusively in Rioja.

According to Dinastia Vivanco:

Tempranillo Blanco wines offer intense fruity aromas, with banana, green apple, citrus and floral characters.

Whilst Tom Perry, of Inside Rioja, tasted one of the very first versions of this wine which I think was aged in acacia wood barrels for a period and reported:

The wine was surprisingly tasty:  straw yellow color, a nose that combined citrus, butter and dried apricots which reminded me a little of viognier if it weren’t for the citrus.  It had a medium mouthfeel, and tasted  citrusy with apricots along with a little black licorice.

I look forward to seeing what producers do with it and to tasting as many as I can.

Image by Ryan Opaz via Flickr

Every winery and wine family have a story to tell, but few get the chance to tell it to a wide audience through the medium of film, and in particular with the artistic expression of a documentary film maker and artist such as Zev Robinson.

Zev, originally from the UK & Canada, comes from a Fine Art background, and it shows in his work. However, it seems he has found the medium of film documentaries to be a great way to capture the histories and the personalities behind the wine stories he is witnessing while currently living in Spain.

Zev has already succesfully released his labour of love about a little known grape, La Bobal, and has continued to train his camera on the wine culture of both Spain and Portugal ever since.

One of these subjects was the Vivanco family from Rioja where he spent over a year recording the first-hand accounts of three generations of the family who started out as local grape growers and have become one of the most influential families in the region. This is about their passion for wine culture, and Rioja in particular. It is about their winery, Bodegas Dinastia Vivanco, but it is also about their Museum of Wine Culture, and the Dinastia Vivanco Foundation. It is a very personal account about how this came about, in their own words, but very much through the documentary-maker’s eyes.

Zev has described in detail how his film came about on his own site, and I recommend reading it:

“Of all the many remarkable stories and interviews for which I am very grateful to have shared, that of Pedro Vivanco has to rank as the most incredible and unique.” Zev Robinson

The result is “Dinastia Vivanco: Giving Back to Wine What Wine has Given Us” which will see its first full premiere in London on March 17th 2011 at the Roxy Bar & Screen on Borough High Street. (see below for the preview, and click on the link to go to the Facebook Event page).

There are still a few £10 tickets for this premiere as well as a guest list of wine, film and London bloggers and media.

The premiere will be a chance to try some of the Dinastia Vivanco wines during the reception before the film, but also in an exclusive tasting after the screening, where we can also hear your views on the documentary.

For more information, and to book tickets, visit the Roxy Bar & Screen site or contact me at robert@thirstforrioja.co.uk about getting on the guest list.

I’ve been conducting tastings of Dinastia Vivanco wines for 7 years, and in all that time, whenever we had a full dinner to match our wines to, I had to apologise when we got to the dessert as “Dinastia Vivanco don’t make sweet wines“.

Dried out grapes on the vine in January

I was very surprised to hear, therefore, not only that Rafael Vivanco WILL be making an experimental quantity of a sweet wine, but that there is an ancient local tradition of these ‘raisined wines’ in Rioja. To be fair, it is a largely forgotten tradition, but it is well-known enough that the Rioja DOCa should be accepting these wines as ‘Rioja’.

Below is the press release that went out today which you can read on PR Web too, but you can get in touch with me, or even come to Bibendum‘s Annual Tasting in London today (January 26th, 2011) to speak to Rafael if you are in town.

Vivanco and the January Vintage in Rioja

Wine Culture has always been the thread that strings together developments at Dinastia Vivanco. On this occasion, Rafael Vivanco, winemaker at Dinastia Vivanco, is proposing to rediscover an ancient, deep-rooted Rioja tradition now sadly forgotten; the sweet wines known locally as “Vinos Supurados” or “Raisined Wines”.

The winery harvested the grapes for the Raisined Wine in Briones on Wednesday 19^th January 2011. These grapes were the Tempranillo, Garnacha, Graciano and Mazuelo grapes from the El Cantillo vineyard that surrounds the winery in Briones. One of Rafael Vivanco’s experimental projects, this research project is driven by his passion to recover and promote the diversity and richness of Rioja’s winemaking heritage. This will be the second vintage of this wine as a tiny quantity was made in 2009 to provide technical experience and parameters for future vintages.

The Rioja “Raisined Wine” tradition is part of an ancient, local grape growers’ custom of storing grapes at home to eat, dried, until Christmas. They usually selected the most mature fruit and loose bunches (often Garnacha) that would be desiccated after a few months – hence the translation as “Raisined”, or even “Shrivelled” and “Rotten”. At Christmas the remaining bunches would be pressed and fermented in demijohns or other receptacles. The result, once fermentation had stopped after a few months, was a wine with very high residual sugar. This wine, sweet but fresh thanks to the remaining acidity, was used both as a dessert wine and medicinally, for its ‘restorative’ properties.

The Dinastia Vivanco grapes used for this vinification of Raisined Wine have remained on the vine in search of the benefits of noble rot (botrytis). As the agent of some of the world’s most prestigious wines, such as Sauternes, this noble rot, encouraged by the early morning vineyard mists rising from the nearby River Ebro, will add complexity and longevity to the resulting wine. Rafael Vivanco has experience of making these unique wines from his own winemaking education in Bordeaux in 1999.

The Autumn colours were marvellous, although I was probably a week or two too late for the most vivid reds (here starting to turn brown), but still amazing, I hope you agree:

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Hotel Viura

If you are familiar with Rioja, you will know that the region is best known for its red wines made from Tempranillo, Garnacha, Mazuelo and Graciano. You might even know that its most important white grapes are Viura and Malvasia, with a tiny bit of Garnacha and Maturana Blanca. 

If you had to pick just one grape to represent Rioja, what would it be? Well, 9 out of 10 would probably choose Tempranillo, so it was a bit of a shock that Rioja’s latest tourism “jewel” was named after the main white variety, Viura, instead. 

Now, I’m not a ‘proper’ travel blogger. I rarely review specific destinations, hotels or restaurants, but I am interested in the things that make the beautiful Rioja region a great tourism destination. I do, however, still get requests from friends and followers on twitter for advice on making the most of their trip to Rioja. 

I realise that most people visiting Rioja have a great deal of competition for their limited travel time and budgets. If I can convince travellers to choose Rioja, and I really do recommend it, this may be their one chance, so somehow they’ve got to get a full experience of Rioja in only 2 or 3 days. The pressure is on! 

Panorama Villabuena de Alava

Well, I have always had lots of ideas of wineries to visit, restaurants, scenic drives and viewpoints, and even non-wine destinations. However, Rioja has always been held back from attracting more higher-end tourist looking for a luxury experience because most hotels, with the notable exception of the expensive “City of Wine“, were more serviceable than attractions in their own right. 

So, I was very keen to see if the arrival of Hotel Viura would change that. I was not disappointed! 

The hotel is an amazing, modern building set at the foot of a lovely, traditional village called Villabuena de Alava, home to wineries such as Viña Izadi and Luis Cañas, but in sharp contrast to it. The wilfully shambolic lines, boxes of colourful concrete and glass, placed seemingly at random by a playful giant, are a refreshing and still welcoming sight. I particularly liked the fact that the wall of glass above the main entrance reflects the traditional village buildings, bringing them “into” this new arrival, tying the two together. I can see why the Mayor pushed for this to be built. And I can see how the developers, designhouses, are right to be getting a lot of positive coverage. 

The hotel itself is probably best described as minimalist, almost austere, luxury. Polished concrete, chicken wire screens on the stairwell, chalked drawings on darkly lit walls in the corridors and moody lighting. 

The rooms are open and airy. Tall ceilings and enormous beds, with the elegant bathroom integrated into the room rather than separated from it. They also have large flat screens, blueray players, and free wifi (what luxury for social media types like me). The deluxe rooms and suites also have outdoor space to enjoy the cool evenings and fresh morning air. 

The hotel also boasts a large restaurant (with what I am assured are VERY well attached barrels over the diners’ heads) and an amazing, naturally cool and humid wine cellar just off the side. The cellar also boasts a “secret passage” that apparently was used to connect this cellar, and its treasures, with the local church that collected the “tithes” from the local populace. Needless to say, the treasures are very different today, but incredibly, this wine cellar is not just stocked with Rioja wines, but also international wines (I believe that the sommelier, Jose Gonzalez Godoy, might have a penchant for ice-wine!). 

So why “the future of Rioja” title above? 

If Rioja is to continue building the brand around the world, not only at the luxury end but in the rest of the market, consumers need to understand more than grape blends and ageing criteria. A regional wine brand is also about culture, and the best way to get more people to understand that is by getting them visiting the region and experiencing it, creating brand ambassadors around the world, whether they are wine Press, travel bloggers, food lovers or wine consumers. Rioja has invested a lot in making the wineries more welcoming and attractive, the food has always been good, but is becoming more creative, and the infrastructure of roads, stations and airports are also being developed. 

But none of this means very much if there is nowhere to stay. 

The accommodation alternatives in the area NEED to improve, and Hotel Viura is a great step forward in this respect. For many of today’s travellers, while we still exist in an era of relatively easy and cheap air travel, weekend get-aways are linked with pampering, affordable luxury and unique experiences. 

So, if you are looking for a place to travel, you want a bit of luxury and you want to be near lots of wonderful places to experience, yet in the quiet countryside, I highly recommend you check out Hotel Viura (and I’m not alone in saying this). 

Here are some of my photos of the hotel and the environs:
 

For full disclosure, I’d like to point out that my 1-night accommodation was free of charge thanks to Hotel Viura and Mango PR 

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• Rioja country: Spain with a touch of glass (thejc.com)
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• Boutique Hotels in Rioja (thirstforrioja.co.uk)
• Impressions of a first time visitor to Rioja – a guest post (thirstforrioja.co.uk)
• Wine Review: Rioja at Tapas Fantasticas (telegraph.co.uk)