Rioja Rewards Patience: A Ballad of Oak & Time

Class transcript:

Welcome one and all for our 26th edition of Sunday Wine School. We are thrilled to have you all with us. 26 Sundays marks a full half year of Wine School. I don't think that I imagined doing a full half year of these Sunday lessons when I first set out. I'm sure that if I told my wife that was what was in store, she would have been incredulous and laughed in my face. But we are 26 weeks, and I'm thrilled to be here with you all. This has been a wonderful silver lining of my pandemic experience and really excited to tackle a new and different subject today. It is a beautiful autumnal afternoon. Feels like fall is in full force, and yet you're glued to a terminal. Hopefully you're glued to a terminal.

But if you're inside, thank you for avoiding the beautiful fall weather and staying inside with us to celebrate Rioja, which tastes like fall. We have a variety of wines to celebrate this singular Spanish region. We have some that kind of represent more modern trends in Rioja, and then we have some others that are standard Paris, that are rigorously more traditional. But that whole notion of – what we consider modern and traditional gets, you know, kind of highly variable in a region like Rioja that has been turning out wine for thousands of years. But, you know, making it in a style that we associate with tradition for, you know, a mere century and a half. And I think that's a road that I'm excited to travel down with you all today, for the sake of, you know, kind of how we're going to work our way through the various wines that we sold through our wine store and, you know, how you should apply yourselves at home.

We're going to start with the wines that see fairly little oak. Rioja, in as much as it is a great red wine, is equally a wonderful tool, a great lens, a wine that allows us to explore what happens in the cellar and how, over time, individual producers intervene at various points in the life of a vine, at various points in the life of a wine in the cellar, and create a house style. And we're going to focus on some of those interventions today as well. So we're going to— You know, dig a little deeper into the science of winemaking. And I'm really excited to do that because I think we often talk about wine in the vineyard, which is where it belongs. But today, we're going to deal a little more with what happens in the cellar.

If ever there was a week to break out multiple glasses, I would say this is it. So I've got two myself to start with. And I'm tasting each of these wines side by side because, you know, I think it's wonderful to move between them. And I think doing so, you know, will cast. You know, I think it's wonderful to do it together in really profound and unexpected kinds of ways. But we're also moving back in time. So we're starting with the younger wines and moving into the older ones, which, you know, traditionally, if you are tasting at home, is, you know, conventional, you know, sommelier and wine drinking practice to start young and get variously older as you drink. And Rioja is a wine that is among the world's most age-worthy and that is uniquely available to consumers in, you know, older.

So that's something that we'll be celebrating today as well. So without further ado, for those of you late to the party, thank you so much for joining us. For all the observant Jews in the mix, I think we're, you know, 5,700 plus, you know, years in the Hebrew calendar. But a big Happy New Year to you all. Thank you all for joining us. Those of you who are joining us remotely, we are excited. Beyond belief for our first live event this Wednesday. Sadly, we don't have the technological capacity to livestream that one. But we're hoping to videotape it for posterity. Hopefully, you know, I will avoid any GoPro, you know, individualized camera, body camera situations. But we're going to try to work out something so that we can share it with people and record it for posterity.

But really excited to see faces. I'll be at Masked Faces at. The lot at Revelers Hour come Wednesday. But the subject at hand is Rioja. And this Sunday, you know, less, you know, directly relatable to Spain's greatest wine. But, you know, I'm mindful of, you know, the historic circumstances that, you know, engendered, gave birth to this class in the first place. And that continued to kind of punctuate our lives and, you know, inform, you know, these Sunday get togethers. And this week, I feel like I would be remiss if I didn't address the most recent historic event. We always start with a bit of verse. My dad sent this poem to me. Thank you, Pops. It is about the notorious Ruth Bader Ginsburg, who sadly just left us this past weekend.

Ruth said, 'real change and during change happens one step at a time.' Rosemary Warchola Trummer was inspired to pen this particular poem. It's called 'In the Steps of RBG.' So let me take one step right now. So let me take one step right now. One step toward respect and give me strength to take another toward clarity. And though my feet might feel like stones, let me take another step toward justice and another toward equity and another toward truth. And though my legs may feel leaden and slow, though someone else may step on my toes, may I inch toward forgiveness. May every step be toward a bridge, enough divisiveness. And as I go, may I find joy in the stepping, grace in the edging toward great change. But if there's little joy, let me step anyway.

Then take another step, and another, and another. We will miss you, Ruth Bader. And RBG was, you know, famously, you know, fearless from the bench in her dissents. In person, relatively shy. Loved opera. She and her husband adored food. She was a terrible cook. Her kids would not let her anywhere near the kitchen. Her husband, famous gourmand, though. And they, no other than Antonin Scalia, would break bread quite a bit together and cook together and celebrate fine wine together. So it feels fitting that we're doing, you know, the same here today. And that notion of, you know, working step by step, making change step by step, is very consistent with, you know, what happens in wine. You know, nothing happens fast in winemaking.

No change comes overnight for the sake of developing a vineyard and developing a house style. And, you know, those evolutions are. Those are the ones that we are going to consider for the sake of the Spanish wine that we're going to take on today. Rioja, a historic region, steeped in tradition, but ever evolving. And it does have a vibrant community of female winemakers as well. It feels, you know, equally fitting. 30 years ago, the local association of Enolagos de Rioja claimed five of 200. But today, female winemakers make up well over 100. Of 300 plus. And there will be ever more, you know, as the region continues to evolve. And we're celebrating a few of those today as well, which I think is really amazing. Winemaking in the region dates back to the Roman era.

I feel like we've started a lot of classes that way. It all starts with the Romans. At any rate, the Romans made wine in La Rioja. It was not a major center of winemaking. But it was a major center of winemaking under the empire. The region's name itself comes from the River Oja, which is one of many tributaries of the Rio Ebro. So I brought up a full map of Spain here so you can get a sense of where La Rioja is in the context of the whole country. Because we are kind of in the northeastern quadrant. You can see the Rio Ebro snaking its way and running its way from, you know, kind of, I guess it would be west to east, into the northeastern part of the country.

You can see the Mediterranean. Arrocoronha is the regional capital. Arro is kind of the de facto capital of Rioja Alta. And the namesake Rio Oja is a tributary of the Ebro. And you have kind of like two major, you know, kind of conditions that inform the kind of climate and geography of the region here. For the, you know, on one hand, it should be said. You have the Sierras de Cantabria, so the mountains just to the north of the region. And they protect Rioja from the prevailing winds that sweep off of the Atlantic. And you can see the Sierra de Cantabria right here. So you have the Basque country just to the north here, Bilbao, and the other coastal cities, which see quite a lot of rain.

The Sierra de Cantabria create a rain shadow in Rioja, so it's much drier and warmer than it would be otherwise. But you still get a kind of a cooling Mediterranean influence from the sea to the south and east. That, you know, sweeps up and cheaply kind of informs and affects the wines of Rioja Baja to the east here. Rioja Baja is rebranded as Rioja Oriental. But these are, you know, lower evolution. So, you know, you have the population winners in the valley. You have La Rioja Alta here to the south of the Rio Agro, and then you have Rioja Aladeza to the north of the river, variously. And we'll talk about the individual communes and the differences between them throughout this lesson going forward. But winemaking spread from the modern era into, you know, the Middle Ages.

The Moors tolerated winemaking throughout their occupation of the Iberian Peninsula. But winemaking didn't really take off in the region until the church was revived in the 15th century. And the monasteries were, you know, really the innovators throughout the region in terms of localized, you know, winemaking technological advances. As a commercial product, though, Rioja remained isolated. It wasn't until the 19th century. And better commercial links were established between the coast to the north and Bilbao and the Basque market in particular. And then the emergence of the railroad thereafter in the 1860s and 1870s seized the region and finally opened to the rest of the world. There was a significant set of global events, though, that transpired at the same time that, you know, really, you know, informed the style of the wines that they came to make in Rioja.

And that was two catastrophic events, you know, and kind of once-in-a-lifetime blights that spread their way from the New World to the Old and affected the vines of the Old World. So first you had downy mildew or powdery mildew, which affected the vineyards of France in the 1850s. And then you had phylloxera, which came a couple decades thereafter. And right on the heels of one another, they devastated the vineyards of France. An apocalypse. An apocalyptic, you know, situation for the winemakers and growers there that saw their vineyards en masse shriveling and dying through the action of this tiny aphid that came on American vine cuttings first to England and then to France. Those curious English gardeners killing it for everyone. But the French merchants had no idea how to combat this aphid.

Eventually, they realized that they could graft their own viticulture. Vitis vinifera, their own European species of vine onto American rootstock and replant. But that took several decades to enact. In the meantime, they looked for a quick fix. They looked for new regions, you know, where they could set up and make wine in the French image. They went to places like Turkey, but they also crossed the Pyrenees and came to Rioja in the 1850s, 1860s, and 1870s. And many of the great estates in the region. The producers we'll talk about today, López de Heredia, chief among them, La Rioja Alta, date from that time and trace their roots to that initial influx of merchants from Bordeaux in particular. Now, historically, the wines of the region have been from many small growers.

Rioja remains a region of many small growers. You're talking over 20,000 plus individual growers still active in Rioja today. That is a lot of people growing grapes. To make wine and a relatively, you know, compared to that small number of estates actually doing the wine making. But historically, you know, these are wines that would have been fermented in open air. So these are just like, you know, essentially outdoor, you know, concrete basins that people were making young fresh wines for sale locally, typically to the Basque market. And often they were using a form of carbonic maceration, which we'll talk about in a second in the context of this one. These were just easy drinking wines. The merchants from Bordeaux. They introduced. Perica, what the Spanish call Perica, what the French call Perique.

So they introduced this, what at the time was a technological advance. What at the time was a very modern advance of wine aged in the barrel. And they said, you know, this local, you know, product that you're making could be something more. It could be a commercial product. But you need to add this oak influence. Now, the Spanish have been using oak for many generations. But they're using huge oak barrels to transport their wine. The French advocated the use of 225 liter barrels. And that is the size of the French traditional Perique. Now, in France, they typically used French oak. But the Spanish had strong trade links to the Americas. So they brought in quite a bit of American oak. So you saw this like wonderful hybrid situation where they were adopting French technology but doing it in their own way.

And that ultimately informed the style of wines from the region. Now, typically, these were blends. These were not single vineyard entities. You know, they, you know, were cobbling together wines from one part of the region that had a particular set of characteristics with wines from another. And typically, you saw, you know, larger states, you know, cobbling together wines from a patchwork of different growers to create a consistent house style and a consistent recipe. So, you know, it was very much a winery. It was a winemaker's wine and predicated a little less on this, you know, notion of, you know, kind of singular terroir. Now, what grapes, chiefly, are growing in, going into the mix here? There are 14 permitted varietals in this particular wine. But the foremost, the most important varietal in the mix here is Tempranillo.

And Tempranillo, if you source, there's a variety. And the root of the word, it comes from the root Temprano, which refers to the fact that it's a very early ripening grape. It is kind of late to bud and relatively early to ripen. And, you know, that creates a situation where you have a wine, you know, that in the wrong environment, in very hot environments, you know, ripens a little too early. And it's incredibly productive as well. And it can give wines that are a little flabby. So, you know, Tempranillo historically has been blended with other grapes. So, you know, those other 13 varietals, permitted varietals in the region, you know, play an important part as seasoning. You can think of Tempranillo as a bit of a building block, a cinder block.

And then you have, you know, other decorative motifs that go on top. We're talking grapes like Garnacha, Graciano, and Mazzuolo. Garnacha is a more heat-resistant grape, very drought-resistant. Tempranillo itself is pretty drought-resistant. For Garnacha, even more so. But it is much later ripening. It can attain higher alcohol more easily. It does better in warmer sites like Rioja Baja. And it adds heft. It adds color, adds additional fruit to wine in Tempranillo that can lack all of those things. And you have other later ripening, more acid-driven, structured grapes like Graciano, which is a local specialty, and Mazzuolo, which is otherwise known as Carignan in different parts of the world. And they give acid and grip to the wine. I like this description of Tempranillo. This is Oz Clark.

This is one of the most lyrical reference works I've ever come upon. He's talking about the taste of Tempranillo. And he says, think of a cross between Cabernet Sauvignon and Pinot Noir. And you have the flavor of Tempranillo. Well, sort of. It has the deep color and rich flavor of the one, plus the strawberry fruit of the other, yet the complexity of neither at its best. But the complexity is not the point of Tempranillo. Its attractions are its luxe texture. Its supple exuberance. Its exuberant fruit. All blackberries and black cherries, mulberries and raspberries. In Vivera Duero and Torre, these flavors have sensational savory, butter, black currant, etc. In light-rate Tempranillo, or lighter rate, such as you might find in Rioja, intended for early drinking, the taste is more of strawberries and plum jam.

Overripe makes it figgy and sweet. Long oak aging delivers wines that are savory, strawberry-ish, and with a touch of coffee bean and dry fruit. Now, I love this notion. This is not a grape like Pinot or even like Cabernet that people deify. People are accepting of the fact that it's a bit of a workhorse and that it's better in a group than it is as a soloist. And I think that's kind of cool. Even in Rioja, they acknowledge that historically the greatest wines typically came from field blends as opposed to single varieties. And so there's this less fetishization. There's less fetishization of Tempranillo as such. And more an understanding that, you know, it's a useful base, but we need to add to it.

And, you know, the question is, you know, what else are we adding to the mix? So without further ado, let's get to some wines. We are going to start with a wine from Rioja Alavesa, which is the Basque corner of the larger region of Rioja. And the Peewee's Playhouse word of the day when it comes to this particular wine is carbonic maceration. Carbonic maceration. So macération carbonale, if you're French. That refers to throwing whole intact berries, not only berries, but bunches of grapes into the mix in your fermenter. Now, this one receives what is, you know, scientifically more to the point, semi-carbonic maceration. So you've got these whole intact clusters. You throw them into the mix, one on top of the other. Now, imagine the condition at the bottom of this vat.

This is a closed fermenter, which would be more traditional in a modern winery for carbonic maceration, for more full carbonic maceration. But in this case, we're doing it old school, as the merchants of Bordeaux did or these smaller growers did prior to the arrival of the French. And the carbonic macerations happen at the bottom. Now, carbonic maceration creates a small amount of carbon. A small amount of alcohol, up to 2%, as you can see here. And it's an enzymatic reaction within the grape itself. So it's better known as intra-grape fermentation. And you see this enzymatic reaction, which consumes acid within the grapes themselves and creates a very small amount of alcohol. And what it creates is wines that tend to have much softer tannins and much fuller, juicier kinds of fruit.

So, you know, you heard Oz, you know, talking about all that bright strawberry that you get in the mix with Tempranillo. This is a wine that doubles down on that. It is immensely drinkable in the way that Rioja C, you know, loads and loads of oak typically are not. Contrast it with another kind of different wine from Alavesa. This is from a small, younger female grower, who I'm minorly obsessed with, who is the woman behind this wine. Sierra de Tolonia. And that refers to the kind of smaller subset of the Sierra Cantabria's that kind of ring her vineyards at elevation. And she works with a bunch of smaller growers there. She's obsessed with Tempranillo at elevation. We talked about this being a grape that ripens early.

You know, so at elevation, you get that longer ripening window, which gives you more complex development of fruit. And that's really what she's after here. We're talking about vines at 600 to 700% (that's 150 meters). Now, she's not making a wine with carbonic maceration. She's working with neutral oak. And she's de-stemming all of her fruit. So if you are de-stemming your fruit, then your grapes cannot, you know, carbonically macerate. You need those whole clusters for that to happen. She's making a more traditional wine with texture, but without that pronounced new oak, overt oak influence. Oak plays a part here, but mostly as an oxidative aging vessel, as an oxygen-transmissive neutral environment. In which to raise these wines. So, you know, she's making wine, you know, in a very, you know, traditional way.

But she is forward-thinking because it cuts against the image of the wine as it was created in the image of the Bordeaux merchants, which was something that had to be raised with an overt new oak influence. Zoe, when you tasted these wines, you know, what struck you, you know, for better or worse about them as it compares, or as they compare to, you know, kind of more traditional styles of wine? And as they compare one to the other for the sake of one that dominated by, you know, winemaking by carbonic maceration, and the other that, you know, dominated by more traditional fermentation? Yeah, I mean, I thought that the Tolanio wasn't going to be whistle clean. I thought that there would be some, like, funkiness to it.

But it was just, like, really nice and plummy and juicy. You get, like, these spicier notes to it. But the quality of the fruit is very much dried. And I think that that's, like, the stereotype of Rioja. It's not necessarily as, you know, like, you know. It's not necessarily as, like, subtle and as, like, current-driven as, I think, some more classic styles that we'll probably see when we start drinking the Heredia. But it is definitely drier in complexity as opposed to the Jerigoa, which is, like, much juicier, jammy. But then also that white wine that is also thrown into the sauvignon probably helps all of those, like, really pretty aromatics strip out of the glass. Zoe makes an amazing point that I forgot to mention about this particular wine, is that 15% of the grapes in the mix are white.

So, Vieira is, has become the traditional white grape of the region. Vieira equals Maccabeo for those of you playing along at home. But, you know, you may think that, you know, a little weird for the sake of a red wine, that you would throw that much, you know, of a white grape in the mix. But, you know, as those of you who tried Roti last time around will remember, you know, very often winemakers will add white grapes to the mix to lend freshness and to add to the bouquet of a wine. And so, you know, that's a great point. I think, you know, a huge difference between the two of these is in that texture. You know, the Arigoya is almost a red wine that drinks like a white.

You know, no tannin to speak of, just bright and juicy. The Sierra de Tolonia has, you know, more grip to it. It's chewier. You know, it's a wine you can stick your tooth into. I like what you said about more of that kind of like dried fruit quality on this particular offering. Did any of the commenters have anything to offer about this particular wine? You know, flight of two. Not yet. There's been a few comments about the four ounce pour, but that will be till later. But everyone, send me all your tasting notes. Oh, great. Yeah. I mean, I feel like we don't do well when we solicit the audience for tasting notes. You know, it very much reminds me of, you know, I've used this quote before, but, you know, it's the Frank Zappa, writing about music is like dancing about architecture.

You know, sometimes, you know, delivering tasting notes, especially if you're not a wine lover. You know, on the clock is one of the least enjoyable ways to enjoy one. You know, it always reminds me. And actually, I think a lot of, you know, winemakers really lose patience with it. You know, they just kind of want you to experience something. They don't want you to reduce it to a set of, you know, adjectives that may or may not actually apply. And I think for them, sometimes people spouting tasting notes are worse than throwing points at a wine. It feels like, you know, someone in the crowd at a magic show telling everyone how the magician is, you know, you know, disappearing. Right. You know, they'd rather just, you know, talk about a vintage, talk about process.

And, you know, as for the specifics of, you know, the emotional resonance of a wine or, you know, the particular quality of fruit in it, you know, they'd rather you figure that out for yourself. I do find, though, that having a partner, having a tasting partner, having someone to talk through these things with, you know, if it's not Zoya and I, if it's, you know, you're lucky enough to be drinking with someone at home. You know, those are some of my favorite tasting moments. And, you know, I love having someone to bounce back on. I love having someone to bounce ideas off of. And I found that I am a much better taster for, you know, kind of sussing out those individual notes for the sake of these wines.

But, you know, in as much as, you know, there are different, you know, kind of qualities of fruit to these wines, I think, you know, the texture is a big difference. And, you know, that has everything to do with how these wines were made. For the sake of one, you have those whole grape clusters that are thrown in the mix. And then, you know, the wine, you know, undergoes this, you know, unique, you know, enzymatic process. And for the sake of the other, it's a more traditional winemaking process, you know, that imports more of, you know, those tannins from the skins of the grapes into the final product. But we're going to move on. And we're going to consider Rioja kind of more as it evolved or came to be through the influence of the merchants of Bordeaux who made their way to Rioja trying to escape the loxera.

And it should be said that tactic only succeeded for a few decades before right at the turn of the 20th century, the loxera found Rioja itself and ran amok. But by that point, the French, in collaboration with American viticulturists, had found a solution to the problem. So Rioja was a little less devastated because they could more easily and instantaneously undertake the work of replanting, benefiting from the French. Thank you. That's a great experience. Now, we're going to taste a couple of wines here, and we're going to consider, you know, what does that mean on the one hand to be traditional versus, you know, a winery that is modern. But I think to, you know, understand that more fully, we really have to unlock the question of oak as it exists in wine.

Now, you know, I've heard it said that, you know, you have, you know, really four biological actors that come together for the sake of creation. And you know, we're in the world of creating wine as we know it. You know, the most obvious is grapes on the one hand. The second, you know, or would be, you know, the catalyst, which is yeast, you know, singer cellular. And in chief, the beer yeast, the cervecia, is the same yeast that converts, you know, most of the sugar in wine into alcohol. There are other yeasts at work, especially in these wines, which are almost uniformly fermented with native yeast. But, you know, that's the most important one. Then the one that gets less flesh, but is significant for the sake of red wines, is lactic acid-producing bacteria, and they carry out that, you know, secondary fermentation process that converts malic into lactic acid, and that happens in almost all red wines.

The last one is the genus Quercus. What prelude are we talking? We're talking about 300 species of oak worldwide, of which white oak is the most important for our consideration today, and there are a handful of white oak species that evolved as the kind of most important vessels for the sake of containing not only wine, but pretty much everything. So prior to the 20th century, if you wanted to ship something, it was going to go in a barrel. Before there was stainless steel, before there was plastic, barrels were where it's at. It just so happens that those things intervened, and, you know, the culture of wine, the culture of wine, the culture of wine, the culture of wine, the culture of wine, coopers of the world, you know, they only had wineries and distilleries to preserve thereafter.

There are so many wonderful variables in the mix for the sake of the oak that our wines age in, though. There are different species of oak that go into these barrels. There are, you know, chiefly two widely celebrated in France in the old world. Petraea, which is Cecil oak, and Rober, which is otherwise referred to as penduculate or English oak. There are other sources of oak in the famed forest of Limoges in France, throughout the paísions, the heart of France. Those go into your traditional French barrels, but there are other sources of oak, Hungary, Slovenia, Croatia, and America. And on our side of the pond, you're dealing with a different species, Quercus alba, and there is a biological difference between these different sources of oak.

American oak tends to be, you know, not unlike Americans themselves, a little more brash. American oak is higher in lactones, so it's more aromatically forward. You can think of American oak as, you know, the person that comes to a restaurant and they're wearing a ton of perfume, and it doesn't bother them, but it bothers everyone else in the restaurant. You know, the key with American oak is, you know, finding the right vessel. So it doesn't work on all grapes. It would be preposterous to age something like Pinot Noir in American oak. It's way too delicate for that, you know, but as you can see, it's a very delicate, you know, variety of oak. You know, but as you can see, as we talked about with Tempranillo, it's a great building block, and it can take on, you know, more rococo elements for the sake of something like American oak.

Other fascinating things about American oak is that it is much higher, and now it's called Tylos Ligne, so it actually has kind of a, typically a looser grain than French oak, but it is higher in, it's more dense, essentially, and higher in these, you know, kind of biological constituents that make it more water-tight, so that you can make barrels by sawing American oak, and you get about 50 percent yield from your tree, whereas the European oak species need to be split, and you can see that happens on this, like, meridial, so you split kind of perpendicular to the grain here, and you get about 20 percent yield on these, individual logs, as opposed to the American 50 percent, which is a big part of the reason that French oak barrels run about twice the price as American oak barrels.

Historically, you know, American oak was also less expensive than French oak, which is part of the reason that it appealed to the merchants of Spain, but significantly, American oak is also more porous, counterintuitive, more dense in its own way, but also tends to oxidize, or the wines made in it tend to oxidize faster, and that has to do with the, you know, kind of molecular structure of the wood itself, but wine in American oak barrels needs to be chopped off more frequently, and that softens the end product and creates a more oxidated, savory wine. You know, we talk about this oxidation thing a lot, you know, at some point we'll actually have to get a chemist in the mix for wine school, and it would be the least attended lesson ever, but it would be hugely fascinating to me and the handful of you that like this whole chemistry thing, but oxygen is a fascinating worker, and it is electron-starved.

It loves to strip our electrons from other molecules, which is to say that oxidation can happen in the absence of oxygen. It just refers to that stripping of electrons, and it creates something off the sake of wine that is less fruity, dampens, oxidation dampens the acid in an individual wine. It softens the texture and creates something a little more elegant and less robust, which is what the merchants at López de Heredia love about it. So this is a Crianza from López de Heredia. They are bastions of tradition. Another kick-ass female winemaker owner in the mix here, Maria Jose, who is a true hero. It is she and her cousins, and they are essentially the great-great-grandchildren, great-grandchildren I believe, of the original founder of the estate, and you can see her here and her cousins, and this is a photo that kind of mimics this famous photo of her grandchildren.

She is furthest to the left on the screen there in their old cellar. Now you can see the cellar walls here. That is what they would call moss or mold. One of my favorite things, Maria Jose, to the left says, it says, I can look at the color of mold, or she can tell by the color of the mold on the cellar walls what the weather will be like 10 days from now. Looks like that one will fall down by any day now. This is, you know, she's talking contemporaneously, which kind of reminds me of the scene in Mean Girls where she can tell the weather, you know, one way or another, but the mold itself is a barometer in the cellar, and I feel like, you know, that tells you everything you need to know about López and how they approach winemaking.

Now the other winery we have in the mix here, I want to show you its cellar, and these are wineries that are separated by meters. They are both clustered around the old train station district in Jaro, which is kind of the de facto capital of Rioja Alta. This is the cellar at Bodega Roda, so, you know, it couldn't be different than the cellar at López. You know, that's not to say that the wines are, you know, soulless or, you know, should be devalued. It just, I think, you know, the architecture itself tells you something about what we're drinking here. And then the winemaking process itself is very different. So López de Heredia, they have their own cooper on site, so they have their own person making barrels for both of these wines.

It is, needless to say, 100% American oak, because historically that's what they've always used, and they are devoted to maintaining that tradition. And then this is a crianza, and that refers to the way the wines are aged. We'll talk about it a little more in the context of the reservas, but this one vastly exceeds the requirements for most crianzas. Typically crianza is required to be in wood for a year, in bottle for a year thereafter. This is a wine three and three, three years in American oak, racked, which is to say, transferred from one vessel to the next, for the sake of clarification, every six months, aged three years in bottle thereafter. It could qualify as a Gran Reserva. It's a 2011. It is savory, it is fabulous, it's amazing.

Bodega Trova makes a very different kind of wine. It is aged for a year, but it is aged in mostly second and third pass French oak, and the quality of the French oak is hugely different than the quality of the American oak. And then you have something that is more reflective of both modern wine, making wine in a style that emphasizes the fruit, versus a more traditional kind of a state that makes wine in a way that really highlights the texture, that acidity, those secondary and tertiary elements. So when you talk about that, you talk about things that derive from the fermentation and the aging process, and less from the fruit as it was in the vineyard. Zoe, what sticks out to you about these two wines as you tasted them prior to our lesson?

Well, I love the Lopez de Heredia style. I think that, you know, using that non-vintage wine that they tend to use, and how it's oxidative and kind of nutty, just like super stewy fruits that I just super enjoy. I really enjoy how that spice is also well integrated, where it's like pie crust, but it's nothing that's going to be too distracting from the palate. It's something about it, it's also kind of like Beaujolais cru, like not like a morgan, but like, you know, something similar to like, I don't know, a little higher altitude, but it does have that juiciness to it as well. Absolutely. And what about the Rota? The Rota was like really big and plummy. Yeah.

When we were tasting, there was like two or three that were a little cork, so I was also going into it in the assumption of like really trying to figure out if there was something like kind of wrong with it, and there wasn't. But seeing that oak presence there is, dichotomy between the presents is I think very instructive where you have it over the top and like it's loud and it's singing quite true. And I think you know the tannic structure on these wines couldn't be any more different, and that's a big misconception about American oak versus French oak. I think people, you know, assume that because American oak is kind of like more overt in the way it impacts the flavor of a wine that it is necessarily more tannic.

That is not the truth. French oak actually contains more tannins than American oak by far, and I do find that French oak it makes for wines that are a little tighter. You know, part of that is because it's less oxidative but part of that is because it transmits more of those tannins into the resultant wine, and I think you get a sense of that with these two wines. In terms of the quality of fruit, you know this tastes, you know, stewed, it tastes older, this tastes younger, it tastes tighter, you know, it tastes juicier, it tastes like cooked fruit, you know, as well. And I think that's a good thing. I think that's a good thing. I think that's a good thing. I think that's a good thing.

I think that's a good thing. I think that's a good thing. I think that's a good thing. As opposed to you know stewed fruit, tastes like dried fruit. It tastes you know hibiscus-y and perfumey but you know there's a juiciness to it and an overripeness to the cellar. And that's you know very different spiciness like you know more of like that you know cinnamon challenge you know kind of spiciness to this wine versus the Lopez de Heredia you know which you know as you said as more of that you know John Wayne old leather chaps kind of of, you know, entrance into the winner's circle. And then, you know, it's worth mentioning too that all of the Lopez offerings are actually single vineyard. They're huge single vineyards.

So, you know, if you're dealing with a 24-hectare plot, you know, is that a single vineyard anymore? You know, there are a lot of single producers that don't own 24 hectares. You know, most small wineries in the world don't own that much land. But, you know, these are wines that are individual sites that have kind of been codified over time as house styles by Lopez. And Zoe briefly alluded to it, but, you know, fascinatingly enough, you know, in the wines of Rioja, the Consejo Regulador, the local regulating body, which was established in the 20's, it was the first established in Rioja and in Spain, allows for 15% non-vintage wine to go into the mix, you know, which is quite a bit. And Lopez takes a lot of advantage of that for the sake of maintaining their house style.

So if they feel like a particular vintage is, you know, not necessarily representative of what they think of Cubillo as a wine, they will add previous vintages in the mix to correct for that. You know, so they are very concerned with making something for their longstanding consumers, the people that love Lopez wines. They want to make a wine year in, year out that, you know, reflects a particular vintage, but still tastes like Vina Cubillo as it has come to be. And so, you know, I think it's a really interesting approach to winemaking. You know, it is certainly not the only way to make wine. You know, there's no, you know, better or worse than this. I think people love to celebrate, you know, this approach to winemaking that Lopez, you know, has, you know, stumbled upon because, you know, they're beating against the tides and, you know, it does feel, you know, wonderfully, you know, almost reactionarily traditional.

And so, you know, I think that, you know, by the same token, it's not the only way to operate. It's not the only way to make great wine from this particular region. Do we have any questions now in the mix? Zoe, God forbid, any tasting notes? Yeah, particularly on the Rhoda, that the nose seems so much more complex and interesting. And then on the palate, it just doesn't necessarily agree. And it's kind of maybe one tone or just very, very juicy and why that disconnection is there. Yeah, I do notice that. Yeah, I do notice that. And I think in a lot of ways, it's fascinating as a foil for the Cubillo because I think the Cubillo almost leans the other way. You know, if anything, the Cubillo, you know, is not, you know, incredibly dynamic on the nose.

And to the extent that it is, it just smells dusty and old. You know, it smells like opening, you know, a closet that has an old leather jacket, you know. But on the palate, it's much more dynamic than you would imagine. And I think the Rhoda is, you know, kind of occupying a different space where, you know, it is more dynamic on the nose, but, you know, maybe a little clipped on the palate, you know, maybe, you know, a little closed off. And, you know, that could be the fact that we're dealing with the younger wine as opposed to an older one. It could be a fact that, you know, we're dealing with a house style that in, for the sake of Lopez de Heredia, is more acid-driven, you know, which, you know, contrasts with something in the sake of, for the sake of Rhoda that is a little more, more plush and fruity.

And, you know, they valued that fruit, you know, at the expense of the acidity to some extent. But I think the duality is really fun to explore for that sake, and I think that's really well observed from that particular taster. Could you explain the aging requirements for Crianza, Reserva, and Gran Reserva in Rioja and how it is different from the rest of the country? I would absolutely love to, Zoe. So, the merchants of Bordeaux, they created this, you know, kind of a culture in which the greatest wines were the ones that were capable of aging the longest. And it should be said that Crianza itself, or Lopez, they say all their wines are Crianza. Crianza is this notion of, they would say, you know, people are Crianza, a garden is Crianza, which is to say that it is created, it is raised, it is brought into being, and, you know, they feel like, they are stewarding, shepherding their wines throughout a life cycle.

And these are late releases from the winery. And they don't want to release a wine onto the market until they think it has come to maturity. They see themselves as stewards of these unique individual products, which incidentally weren't in bottle until, you know, really the beginning of the 20th century. There wasn't a tradition of bottling these wines. And, you know, that's something that they, you know, really ran with and, you know, subsequently evolved into a house style for the sake of holding these wines back in bottle at the cellar for additional aging. But traditionally in the region, as the local kind of board codified these styles that were predicated on this kind of pyramid of the greatest wines being the ones that aged the most, you have Crianza, which is the first tier.

So you basically have the kind of Sejo style, which is, you know, wines like the first two that we tasted, they're just classified as Rioja. And there are no aging requirements for those. Those just have to be from Rioja proper. And then Crianza has aging requirements. And the aging requirements for a wine labeled Rioja Crianza are one year in barrel. They don't specify what kind of barrel, American or French, but it does have to be a smaller barrel. It does have to be a Barrica to qualify. A one year in barrel, and that's a minimum, that's a four. And then one year in barrel, that's a four. And then one year in bottle thereafter. Reserva is a style that by law spends at least one year in barrel and three years in total between barrel and bottle before it is released.

And then lastly, Gran Reserva is reserved for wines that spend at least two years in oak and a minimum of five years in total between two years in barrel and three years in bottle prior to release. That recently changed. It used to be three years in barrel and three years in bottle, but now it's three years, or sorry, it used to be two years in barrel and three years in bottle. And now it's two years minimum for Gran Reserva in barrel, three years in bottle, but a total of five years from inception from vintage to release. So that's the pyramid, but you know, the connotation, the philosophy there is that the greatest wines from this particular region are the ones that have aged the most.

And, you know, that philosophy is not one that is adopted by, you know, every winery in the region. You know, there are people making wine in a fresher style, you know, like the two we tasted. And, you know, I think as wines age, you know, they taste more like oak as they age than they do the original fruit, but, you know, in this case, you know, what we're celebrating is Tempranillo, a grape that has a wonderful relationship with oak, and I think cannot lose, you know, is able to retain a sense of itself in spite of extensive aging in, you know, barrel over time. Now, which is a great segue to the Reservas. If you have any questions or further questions about the kind of Crianza and kind of the Sella that we just tasted.

So, not necessarily, just one quick one. Would you suggest drinking Riojas at maybe a higher temperature? Someone was saying that it was more like at a 65 degree wine. What do you think? I just think it depends on, you know, the individual Rioja. You know, I would say for the wines that we kind of started off with, you know, I would, you know, recommend drinking those at a slightly colder temp, but, you know, I do think that, you know, the bigger, bolder wines are ones that, you know, you could drink at a slightly higher temp. You know, I would say, you know, by and large, I tend to enjoy my wine at a slowly lower temp for the sake of the reds and a slightly higher temp for the sake of the whites than most people are comfortable with.

You know, I kind of want to drink everything at like a cool cellar temp, which is, you know, probably closer to 58 to 62 degrees. And, you know, if I feel like it should be hotter or colder, then I'll leave it out or throw it in the fridge for a few seconds accordingly. You know, but I do think that the wines that see oak in particular, you know, a lot of that does shine, you know, closer to 62, 64 degrees than the cooler end of the spectrum. And, you know, I think, you know, for these wines that have more kind of like a warm baking spice component, you know, I do think that, you know, tends to emerge, you know, as they come up in temp as opposed to at a cooler temp.

So that's a great question. So now we're going to taste through another wine from Lopez de Jarrilla, which is really an old favorite of mine. This is a Bosconia. Bosconia is a single vineyard wine from Lopez de Jarrilla. It comes from the vineyard El Bosque, which itself is pretty massive. It is a wine of five and five. So it is five years in barrel. All right. And five years in bottle thereafter. So again, all of these Lopez wines that we're drinking could be Gran Reserva. But, you know, they have raised the bar. And they go, you know, they're like that, you know, annoying student who has 100% in the class already and is asking for extra credit. You know, so they go above and beyond it.

And for them, you know, that's just about, you know, what they see as the maintenance of tradition. And, you know, they're internal logic as opposed to, you know, some imposed logic from a governing authority. Bosconia historically was a wine that, you know, they might have added Pinot Noir to. And this is a Burgundy bottle. And, you know, the other wine they make from an even more famous single vineyard, Tondonia, comes in a Bordeaux bottle. And that really kind of explains the relationship between these two wines. This is the kind of Burgundian. This is the kind of equivalent. It's harvested later. It's quite a bit of limestone in this vineyard. It's at elevation compared to Tondonia. It is more supple, silkier than Tondonia is, which sees a further year of élègance, both in, in barrel and in bottle, compared to the Bosconia.

This is one of my favorite wines in the world. It is 80% Tempranillo, 15% Grenache, and the remaining, you know, 15% Garnacho, Mazuello, and Graciano in the mix. Graciano is an interesting ingredient. Graciano is very late ripening, high acid grape. And Maria Jose has said that as the world warms, they're planning more of it because it will allow them to maintain the acid in their wine, which is a huge part of their signature style. And, you know, for me, this is a 2008. There is considerable vintage variation in Rioja. It's, you know, a relatively new wine. It's a relatively cool climate by Spanish standards. And I think in those cooler climates, those more marginal climates in the wine world, you tend to get more vintage variation.

The local Consejo, one of my favorite things that they do is they evaluate the vintages, and they have like basically three criteria they give to a vintage. So they're not on a hundred percent scale. This is like trade association, mind you. So even when they're saying something is, you know, a, you know, a relatively mediocre vintage, they want to, you know, put a good spin on it. So they say that the vintage is bueno, muy bueno, or excelente. Those are the criteria. So 2008, according to the Consejo, was muy bueno. 2012, also muy bueno. There hasn't been a vintage that was either bueno, muy bueno, or excelente since 1984. Sadly, 1984 was just normal, pour 1984. Orwell would be so proud. It seemed very fitting that 1984 was normal.

But there is a distinct difference between these wines, which is part of the problem of evaluating vintages that way. 2008 was a much more acid-driven vintage. In its own way, it was a more classic vintage. It was coming on the heels of 2007, which the Consejo said was just bueno. It wasn't muy bueno, it was just bueno, guys, but it is a classic vintage in the sense it's a little more acid-driven. 2012, the yields were a little lower. It was very hot, which, you know, created some problems throughout Rioja, you know, for the sake of, you know, some of the vineyards, and it was a better year down in the valley because of that in a lot of ways, but, you know, these are vintages that are classified equally by the Consejo, but are nonetheless, you know, dynamic and very different.

For those of you that, you know, give a rat's ass, one inspectorator said that 2008 was an 88, and 2012 was a 90, you know, and again, just like, what does that mean? You know, this whole, you know, putting any quantitative spin on a vintage, you know, strikes me as hugely problematic, you know. I would like to know more about, you know, the kind of particular conditions. Just tell me, you know, was it wet? Was it dry? You know, was it a very high-yielding, you know, vintage? Was it a low-yielding vintage? You know, is it better for, you know, particular grape or another? You know, don't assign arbitrary logic to it. You know, let me discover that for myself.

You know, one man's, you know, 88 is another man's 90, and I am someone that, you know, stylistically, like a lot of cooler vintage wines that, you know, the wine spectator might, you know, call 88, or that the consejo might call it bueno, and, you know, my bueno might be other people's, you know, normal, or vice versa. So, I think, you know, I would encourage you, as you consider vintages in wine, to, you know, dig a little deeper, you know, than those kind of, like, you know, more, you know, surface-level criteria. I love the Bosconia. It's one of my favorite wines just to and let evolve over time. You know, I think it is really dynamic on the nose. It doesn't smell like anything fresh. It is a wine that smells musty and old.

It reminds me of walking into the attic, and not, not like your own attic, like your grandparent's attic, you know, and, you know, nothing about it, you know, it smells like tradition. It smells like fall, you know, and, and I do, I adore that about it, and it is just so dynamic on the nose. You know, it's one of those wines that I could just, you know, smell, and, you know, that feels like a reward enough. We haven't talked La Rioja Alta at all. They are equally tradition-bound. Vina Ardanza is one of their most famous vineyards in La Rioja Alta itself, but it should be said that this is a kind of a fascinating, you know, modernist meets tradition kind of approach to winemaking.

So, this particular wine is a blend of Tempranillo, and Garnacha, but the Garnacha is sourced from estate vineyards in Rioja Baja, so they're reaching outside the home base and going to a warmer region, and this is a wine that has quite a bit of alcohol, so this is like 14% and change, and that it reflects the warmer vintage and a high percentage of Garnacha from a warmer site. Now, they own the warmer site, which is unique because a lot of the great houses in Rioja are purchasing fruit, and La Rioja Alta, more recently for this wine, has moved to a model of Garnacha, and it's a wine that is they're farming it all themselves, but they also age the wines differently, which I find really fascinating.

So, they use 100% American oak because they are, you know, they have been kind of schooled in this notion of American oak as, you know, important to Rioja and the older wines, you know, as a kind of a regional trademark, but they vinify them separately. So, the Tempranillo sees 36 months in American oak, and La Rioja Alta has a 100% American oak, and La Rioja Alta has a 100% American oak, and the Garnacha sees 30 months in American oak, and then they blend them thereafter. So, you know, in its own way, a very traditional approach to winemaking, but scrupulously traditional in a way that Lopez doesn't embrace. Lopez, you know, their wine is almost like a time capsule.

You know, they're always looking at old letters, and when a fermentation gets stuck at Lopez, they light a fire underneath the old wooden fermentation vessel. When a barrel springs a leak, they use pigs. They use blood to seal the leak. They vine with egg whites. So, they're always, you know, looking to the past. La Rioja Alta, they're, you know, kind of remaining consistent, staying true to these, you know, particular variables, but, you know, looking to do it in, you know, a more scrupulous way. You know, how can we advance this older style? And I find that, you know, kind of really, really fascinating. And, you know, I think the wine reflects that, because you get that American oak influence.

And something that American oak gives you is this, like, suppleness, this sweetness on the mid palate in a really, you know, kind of fascinating way for me. And, you know, that doesn't work with all wines. You know, to throw American oak at a wine that already tastes sweet, you know, it feels like gilding the lilies. But, you know, for the sake of, you know, some of these Riojas that come from, you know, this more marginal northern climate, you know, and are already acid-dried, and, you know, they're already, you know, they're already driven, it just, you know, kind of makes these wines, you know, so much more, kind of, sensual, and, you know, luxurious, in a way. And I love that about this wine. Ardanza is one of the world's great wines from year in and year out.

And as much as I love Lopez, you know, I will say it bottle to bottle, vintage to vintage, sometimes their wines are a little more variable. They've gotten less variable, I think, as I've been drinking them. But I will say about, you know, La Rioja Alta, they make way more wine than, than, than Lopez. But for the wines that are more kind of traditionally minded, you know, year in and year out, you know, you always, you get a wine that over delivers. And I think that's, that's really, really fabulous. And then, you know, lastly, briefly, we have Remiluri. So Remiluri is in Alavesa. And Remiluri is, you know, traditional but modern. This is, this is Telmo Rodriguez. This is his, like, this looks like a Tiger Beat kind of, you know, cover.

This is like winemaker, like, teenage fan lit. He's a dreamy Spanish dude. He doesn't come from a winemaking family. But his father purchased this historic estate. He's come from a Basque family. But his father purchased this historic estate in 1967, that had had vineyards historically. There was a monastic vineyard there dating to the 14th, 15th century. And, you know, it would have been a waste not to make wine on this privileged site. And he leaned into that. But he found his own way. He left his family's 500 year old house and made wine throughout Spain with his business partner. And then with his sister, actually, who does the vineyard work, Telmo's come from a Basque family. And he's come from a Basque family. And he's come from a Basque family.

And he's come from a Basque family. And he's come from a Basque family. And he's come from a Basque family. And he's come from a kind of the face of things. And his sister does a lot of the hard work in the vineyards. They came back and they revived the family estate. And he is someone that, you know, really is kind of pushing to understand this notion of tradition differently. So this is a very traditional wine. It is classified as Rioja Reserva. But it is aged in French oak exclusively for 18 months. So he's less concerned stylistically with American oak as intrinsic to, you know, Rioja as a wine. And more concerned with La Granja Nuestra Senora, which is his single vineyard spread across both Rioja Alavesa and Rioja Alta for the sake of this wine.

And he wants it to be uniquely indicative of these wine and of these kinds of vineyards in Alavesa that are at higher altitude. You know, but for me, you get, you know, the quality of Tempranillo at altitude, wine at altitude. You also get the quality of French oak in this wine. And, you know, some of the things that you could say of the Rota, you can also say of Telmo's wine, for better or worse. And I think that is all down to, you know, aging in French versus aging in American oak, for better or worse. And I think it's really kind of fascinating and instructive, you know, for that sake. And Zoe, I'm going to let you kind of gather your thoughts, but I have a quote here. I really like this.

So, this is Maria Jose Lopez de Heredia, who kind of has a little bit of Serge Hosher in her. She, you know, has these amazing aphorisms and, you know, way of talking about her singular, unique estate in, you know, these beautiful soundbites. But she says of Lopez de Heredia, this is hugely traditional domain. A wine can be both modern and traditional. Sometimes traditions can be modern, and modernity can be traditional. Lopez de Heredia has been modern for 140 years. I think that's super cool. And I don't think Telmo would disagree with her. I think Telmo, you know, would say that, like, you know, what she's doing was very modern in the 19th century. We just consider it traditional 100 plus years later.

And, you know, we need to, you know, stop talking, you know, in that dialectic traditional, you know, modern. And, you know, just consider, you know, the wines for their own sake. And, you know, what the region needs from one place to the other for the sake of creating, you know, a multiplicity of styles that's satisfying to people that want to appreciate Rioja. What do you got for me, Zoe? I think that's perfect of having, being modern for the past 100 years. I feel like that typifies them more than anything. Really quick, can we talk about how pig's blood stops? We know how blood can, like, filter, but I have no idea what you're talking about. For the same reason that, so you get a cut, your blood clots. It is clotting agents.

So, same clotting agents that keep you from bleeding out unless you're a Romanov keep a barrel sealed. So, is it fresh blood or is it like they have, like, dried, coagulated blood that's already done? Cool. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, it's gangster. Another reason why wine isn't always vegan? Well, no, they, like, this is, like, double non-vegan, though, because they fine with egg whites. So, I mean, maybe the, maybe, like, you could find a vegan that's okay with egg whites, but not okay with pig's blood. So I will, I will, I will grant that. But, you know, yeah, neither here nor there. Yeah, I forget what the rule is in Spain, but I know that in France they stopped clarifying wine with ox blood in 1981. Oh, yeah. They're not clarifying with ox blood.

They're clarifying with egg whites. And it should be said that that is ages old. That's, like, really old school clarification method that a lot of producers use. But it's hugely fitting that Lopez does that because everything else they do is so old school. Yeah, it's crazy. Can you explain a little bit more about how American oak became the champion in Rioja instead of French oak since all of that? So it depends on who you listen to. So it's really interesting. And there's actually, I'll have a lot of really cool articles for those of you that want to dig deeper. The prevalent, the most prevalent story is that it was just cheaper. So, you know, they say American oak was cheaper than French oak at the tail end of the 19th century.

And Spain had these existing trade networks with the Americas in a way that France didn't because Spain had all these American colonies. And, you know, France had some. But, you know, they traded out of them, you know, in, you know, the early 19th century for the most part. And they had Haiti and a few other outposts in the Caribbean. But there's not a lot of oak there. But actually, I read an interview with Maria Jose. And she said that, you know, she's dug into the letters and discovered that, you know, French and American oak was actually, like, pretty uniformly priced. And at Lopez, they just liked them. They liked the more oxidative streak that American oak brought to their wines. They were always after lower alcohol wines at Lopez.

And she talks about the great wines. So Lopez has this amazing cache of old bottles. And she talks about these wines that are, like, 12% alcohol from the 50s and 60s that have aged, you know, ridiculously well. And she talks about her, you know, great-grandfather and grandfather preferring these wines that are, you know, more elegant. And she talks about, and it should be said that, you know, in, you know, American oak, you know, as a more porous vessel, you tend to lose alcohol in a wine. And because of that, you know, oxidation. And she says it was more of a stylistic choice than a financial one. You know, she, you know, obviously is in a position to make it more stylistic than economic. But, you know, it depends on who you talk to.

But it's really fascinating. So, like, people don't talk about American oak a lot, but Lopez de Jerez has a single source of oak in the Appalachians. I think it's Kentucky or West Virginia. The most actually storied source for American oak for wineries is in Missouri, in the Ozarks, because the climate there is more marginal. The soils are really poor. And the American oak grain is really tight. There are a lot of dimensions, you know, to how you age oak. And I'll send around a video, but watching a barrel being made is a small, minor miracle. Cooperage is hugely fascinating. And a big part of the barrel making process is actually aging the staves for years outside. So, good barrels are made by aging the oak outside.

So, basically, you just put the planks in the same. Same forest outside in the elements for two, three, four years. And traditionally, the most scrupulous houses will ask for another year. So, famously, like, you know, Romani Conti, they ask for an extra year. So, three years is like, you know, the most that most cooperages in France will do. But, you know, Romani Conti asked for an extra year of aging. And as you expose the oak to the elements longer. It tends to leach out vanilla in particular. But the harsher tannins as well tend to leach out through exposure to the elements. So, you get, you know, a softer, you know, more elegant oak imprint than you would otherwise. And, you know, American oak barrels traditionally were made for the spirits trade in a much kind of rough and readier style.

Where the planks were not aged that way and they were steamed. But now they're made in a much more conscientious manner in which they're left outside. And people talk about the difference. So, between French and American oak being eroded because people are just making barrels in, you know, more scrupulous, quality-conscious manner. So as the barrels become more quality conscious, the difference between, you know, American and French oak is less significant. If that makes sense. But, you know, it's really hugely fascinating, you know, for those of us who love wine to parse. And the differences are not, you know, self-evident. You know, the differences are not self-evident. The difference is, you know, there are a lot of stories of, like, Kelly White, amazing wine writer. You know, she was tasting a couple wines from Ridge out of California.

One aged entirely in French oak from the same vineyard, everything. One aged entirely American. And she misidentified them in a way that, like, really, you know, threw her for a loop. Because all the gross generalizations she'd made about American oak didn't necessarily apply. Particularly, the notion that American oak was more tannic didn't necessarily apply in that particular context. So, anyway. It's really fun to parse. And American oak gets poo-pooed because, you know, it is bombastic. But some of my favorite wines I've ever tried have been wines aged in old American oak. American oak, you know, in its youth in wines can be a bit much. But as the wines age, they're really seductive and fun, and texturally fabulous.

And I will say, like, I have a really fond weakness for old California Cab from, like, the late 70s, early 80s aged in American oak. It just, like. It's at, like, 12 and a half percent alcohol. But it's, like, velvety and pure. It's like a velour suit of a wine. They're just really cool. And I think that texture, I think, is something you get a sense of in these Riojas. And then that sweetness on the mid-palate. That, you know, that vanilla, you know, is something you get as well. That luxuriance, I think, is something that always wants that. What else do you got? I just want to share this with you. Tim thinks that there should be a campaign for 'Make American Oak Great Again.' Yeah, yeah.

I don't know that we want to tie anything to MAGA as such. I'd like to, you know, get to a moment where we can just forget that. Well, no. We should never forget that that happened. Anyways that we should forget that other, you know, historical catastrophes have befallen us. Because we'll be, hopefully, better for it when we respond to it. Yeah. And evolve out of it. But, fuck yeah. Yeah. I love the idea that, you know, you know, the grapes are American. Why not, you know, make wine out of American oak, too? And actually, one of my favorite winemakers in Germany; he makes Pinot, or he makes Pinot kind of adjacent wine. And has started using German, local German oak, for the same reason. You know, so, yeah.

I think a lot of it is about process. A lot of it is not necessarily about the innate qualities of the parent product. You know, you can use American oak to, you know, benevolent or maleficent ends, you know, as much as you can use any other vessel. Can you talk a little bit about, like, Slovenian, Hungarian, like, other different types of oak that's not the binary of French and American and where they fall? Great question. Actually, I think a lot of really forward-thinking winemakers are using a lot of, like, Hungarian oak. So, fascinating. Interestingly enough, in Bordeaux, prior to the 19th century, their preferred oak was Hungarian. It was only through the unavailability, like, inavailability of, like, Hungarian oak into the 19th and 20th centuries that they came to embrace their own oak, which then became, you know, this fetishized thing.

But that wasn't always the case in Bordeaux, even. So, you know, I think, you know, it's a lot like. Anything else, you know, in culture, these fads are much more, you know, fluid than we might imagine. And, you know, something that we think of as traditional today, you know, always falls by the wayside. And actually, I thought this was particularly cool. So, this is a very different anecdote, but Andrei Chelyshev is an immigrant from the old world who came to California and is widely considered kind of the father of California viticulture. And he established Bouillot as this, like, foremost estate in California and initially aged the wines in French oak, but couldn't come by it, and then adopted American oak. And American oak, for his Cabernet, became, like, a huge part of his house style.

And then when other people took over from him, they continued to use American oak for the wines. And the story goes that Chelyshev came back to the cellar to taste the wines, you know, a couple of decades after he had originally left the winery. And this is the winemaker at the time recounting that. Chelyshev asked me why we were still using American oak. And the winemaker said, because that's what you did. And he turned to me and he said, that was 16 years ago. I've changed. Why haven't you? The only reason we used American oak is because we couldn't get French oak. We didn't have French oak in the first place. And, you know, why are you still using American barrels? And I think, you know, really illuminating.

And I think, you know, a lot of these things that, you know, we take for granted, a lot of these things that, you know, have become embedded in tradition, you know, it's all more fluid than we might imagine. And I love, you know, especially for the sake of wine, you know, living in the murkiness of it all. And, you know, not standing on tradition as such, but understanding tradition in context. And understanding tradition as something that must evolve. And, you know, just to bring it all back to, you know, the notorious, talking to my wife this morning. And, you know, something as simple as a woman opening her own bank account or being able to sign for her own mortgage, you know, couldn't happen until the 70s in a lot of places, you know.

And we shouldn't embrace that as tradition, you know, and more than we should embrace the reflexive use of oak in wine, you know, tradition. As, you know, the law must evolve and will continue to, you know, we should just understand the underlying logic of it all and try to make the world and the wine a better place as such. So, I'm going to toast out and we can, you know, address additional questions. But cheers to you all who have been listening this long. I've been particularly enjoying these wines and I hope you buy more of them because Rioja is one of life's great joys. But alone together is always cheer. Zoe, what else do you have for us for the sake of questions? Yeah, what's the aging potential of these wines?

In particular, the first two packs that were a little bit younger and more unctuous as opposed to the Rémilleries and the Dundonis of the world. That'd be real good. The aging potential. I think it's surprising. I don't know, honestly, Zoe. You know, I actually, I am someone that enjoys older wine, you know, for the intellectual exercise of it. But I really don't like it at all. You know, I think I would like to think that the Tolonia would age really beautifully. It's a sturdy wine, you know, the acid structure combined with the tannins is really great. You know, I think the texture of it would, you know, that chewiness would evolve into something, you know, more luxuriant as those tannins, you know, precipitated out. I think that'd be really cool to see.

I think a big part of the appeal of the Arigoya is the fact that it's, you know, really nice. Is young, um, you know, so, um, it's a bit like, um, you know, a pop song that you know when it's not young anymore, you know what I mean? So, I think the appeal to this one would be, you know, um, a little um you know more about drinking in its youth. But that's not to say that you couldn't, you know, sock this away in a properly uh stored uh wine chest and enjoy it three to five years later. Uh, but you know, I'd love to see what happened to this like 10 years on. I think it'd be super cool, um, I think that you know, um, there's nothing you know about this wine as such that makes it any less age-worthy than anything that we've considered.

A fascinating, like uh, aspect of you know what allows a wine to age, you know? So, these like it should be said, like oxygenation. in winemaking you know the most important thing that a winemaker does um um aside aside from you know uh their work in the vineyard in the cellar the most important thing that they do is is really uh you know maintain sanitation so they remain scrupulously clean hopefully if they're forward thinking they they work with native yeast um but the most important thing they do other than that is regulate oxygen oxygen transfer um you know that sounds really nerdy but um you know there are all sorts of you know fascinating and unexpected um outgrowths of wine that are exposed uh wine to oxygen in its youth and it is the fact that if you keep a wine closed off from oxygenation or you know stress as it were um sometimes you know keeping it closed off as long as possible uh tends to erode its aging capacity and and you know we love to personify wines you know those of us in the wine trade but it feels consistent you know it's it's like a child that's been you know sheltered um you know wines that are exposed to oxygen and it's like a child that's been you know sheltered um you know it's it's like a child that's been you know of oxygenation in their youth are much more enduring uh lopez is an outward extreme of that all you know these are heavily oxidized wines Not only are they aged in these ancient American oak vessels, um, which themselves, you know, in a given vintage, you know, uh, you know, 10-20 of them would be new, but the vessels themselves are more, are more porous for the sake of oxygen transfer. But they're racking every six fucking months, and racking so racking involves taking basically taking the wine from one vessel and putting it in another, um, you know, uh, which sounds you know pretty simple, but, uh, in the course of doing that, you're exposing a wine to so much oxygen, you know, you're, you're, you know, actively choosing to, um, add that to the mix, but, you know, because, uh, the wines In their youth, um, you know, become a little more inured to that.

These wines from López uh, age almost indefinitely, um, uh, in a really fabulous way, and you know, and and, uh, I think that's not worth, uh, underestimating, um, you know. They're never going to be wines that hang on primary fruit, you know, so it's not going to be the kind of world, that is enjoyable because of, you know, its dried fruit qualities. It's always something more savory, uh, but, um, it's something more savory that's more enduring, uh, because of it, and and, I think, that's, you know, really, um, you know, fabulous and poetic, um, so what else you got? Um, why is Garnacha? instead of garnacho and um how has that um that's fascinating so we that is interesting and that brings into bear this like uh really like broader uh fascination linguistically you know why is there a male and a female like a feminine and masculine in the first place how did that evolve out of english you know um you know what does it mean as english speakers that we have no masculine and feminine um you know these are all really fascinating questions um there are actually a lot of like forward thinking um linguists in spanish that are trying to um you know make the language less um you know gendered um i have no idea um i don't Know why it's Garnacho and Garnacha, um I've said to the staff, uh many times over that Garnacha is, uh, like my Spanish dry queen name, um but you have to do like this, uh when you, when you, when you pronounce it, um and I'm embarrassing myself, and I apologize to anyone I've scarred at home, uh but I, I don't know, I don't know why the shift, um I don't know why the fluidity, um you know, sometimes like my one of my favorite like notions in Spanish is like the one of the great Spanish uh slang words for the male member is a feminine uh work, so you use a female pronoun for the male member, like it just, you know, it's it's really fluid, you know. It's, it's, uh, so who knows, uh, I don't know why, uh, it vacillates one to the other, um, and takes on one expression as opposed to the other, um, uh, I'll do some, I'll do some digging, uh, but you know, it should be said that great names in general are super fluid - Tempranillo, famously, uh, Tempranillo in Rioja, it is Tinto in Douro, in Ribera de Alero, it is Tinto de Toro in Toro, um, my personal favorite is, um, in, uh, Catalonia, uh, Sensibel in La Mancha, uh, if you cross the border into Portugal, it becomes Tinto Fino, um, and then go far enough south in Alentejo, it becomes Egonish, and that's just a handful of cinnamon, so, um, you know these things. Just take on uh local identities in like unexpected, dynamic uh ways um and I don't know that's the best answer I can give but I, I'm, excited to look into it. If the internet has anything about them, I love it. I think one of the fun games is saying like 'Hey, how many Tempranillo synonyms can you put a timer on for 60 seconds?' Yeah, that's a nerdy Psalm game.

One of the other favorite, favorite nerdy Psalm games is: can you name all the uh grapes aloud and checking up the pop, so you know there are a lot of you know fun nerdy Psalm uh initiatives like that indeed um I think that's about it when it turns into questions we had some. Like, really good-tasting notes, um, particularly, yeah, um, one notable one is that the kind of uh tastes like a blackberry that's smoking on a camel, The Ardanza uh, The La Rioja Alta, smoking on a camel or smoking a camel, and I was wondering, a camel, a camel, like a regular camel, um, I like, I like that we're getting into specific tasting notes when it comes to individualized cigarettes, uh, but I'd be curious whether we're dealing with, like, full camels or Camel Lights, um, I'm somewhat ashamed to admit that I've never smoked Camel Lights because my wife had a weakness, Camel Lights, and I had a weakness, I never smoked as such.

but i don't think i've ever bought a packet of cigarettes um for myself for other people yes but um i had a uh occasional weakness for bumming cigarettes off people um you know in weaker moments and you know so i've never had like a regular camel i've only ever had camel lights um so uh i can't i don't have a particular association when it comes to camel cigarettes um as opposed to other cigarettes um camel light just tastes cheap to me um uh but um uh tobacco it should be said um is a um a singular and hugely appropriate tasting note when it comes to a lot of these wines especially um the more old-fashioned wines aged in american Look, uh, other tasting notes? No, it's about it, yeah.

Oh, great! Well, I was hoping you guys would keep me on longer so I can excuse to drink more of the reservas um, I hope that you all enjoyed the lesson um at home and I couldn't be more uh ridiculously excited uh to see a whole bunch of you uh in person come Wednesday um, and I hope that all of you uh participating uh remotely have a fabulous week and thank you so much for joining us so uh, you're the best um, alone together as always uh, have a wonderful week.