Here comes another installment of my adventures in Rioja. We were only there for two days and yet, I've only managed to give you a debriefing on about half of what we experienced. Well, I'm about to hit your with some more. Today, I want to write about Finca Allende and Finca Nueva. Both belong to Miguel Angel De Gregorio, a passionate, generous, pleasure-seeking believer in terroir wines.
Miguel Angel provided me with some information about the winery and I will copy here a few quotes from the first page he gave me, which introduce his philosophy- which, as it turns out, is a different approach then that taken by many other wineries in Rioja who rely on blending to make their best wines. Miguel Angel writes,
"In 1986, when I arrived in Briones and I discovered the singular Terroir I always dream of. I started buying old vineyeard plots and I tried to know and understand each Terroir. We gradually found our model. The expressiveness of the terroir, very structured wines, very market tannins with lots of mineral aromas… year after year, pruning after pruning, harvests after harvests, we try to extract the whole essence from each one of our vines, to introduce her inside every bottle."
I intern as a translator and parts of me itch to edit the writing, but if I did, certain beautiful things would be lost. Such as the ever-so poetic use of a feminine third person singular subject in the last sentence: to introduce her inside every bottle. It just sounds so much better that way. It almost gives the terroir a human presence, elevating it's importance to that of the other humans involved in the winemaking process.
At Finca Allende and Finca Nueva, that is precisely what Miguel Angel seeks to achieve. He says he modeled his winery not after the giant, successful wineries of Rioja, but instead he looks north, to Bordeaux (after a few glasses of wine, he will begin to explain to you in French, what makes Bordeaux si beau, si rempli de la passion). A large part of the inspiration he gets from Bordeaux is reflected in his acute attention to terroir. At Finca Allende, his 56 hectares of vines are divided into 92 plots based on their distinct characteristics. That means the most plots measure just over half a hectare!
At Finca Allende, Miguel Angel cultivates mostly Tempranillo, but also Garnacha (which he calls Grenache, the French equivalent), Graciano, Malvasia and Viura. At Finca Nueva, he narrows his focus to three grapes: Tempranillo, Grenache and Viura. For aging, all Finca Allende wines are aged in barrels for an average of about 3 years. Can you guess what kind of barrels they're using… mais oui, 100% French oak Allier from Bordeaux. And the bottles…Bordeaux encore!
Finca Nueva has a slightly different 'personality' than that of Finca Allende. Their tagline is: "Vinos Divertidos | Pleasure Wines", therefore, certain aspects of the vinification processes are different. For example:
"The fresh, funny, pleasure wines: Finca Nueva Tempranillo, Rosé and Viura. The winemaking is done in stainless steel tanks with the method of destalked harvest, making intensive pumping over and shaking. Then the wine is bottled."
Pues, now that I've shared a few statistics and general factoids, I'll tell you about my experience at the winery. For starters, the fact that our 2 hour tour became a 9 hour afternoon of debauchery should give you a good idea about the kind of time I had.
When we arrived at the doors of the XVII century palace that is now home to the winery, we were greeted by Veronica, the winemaker. (*Well, first my friend, Manuel, had to de-robe himself because a baby lizard crawled down his sweater while Veronica and I mused about the beauty of the palace). She explained it was her first tour and that she had been swamped with the vendimia, or the harvest. When we met Miguel Angel, the deep red stains on his hands confirmed this. He stayed with us long enough to crack a few jokes, smoke a few cigarettes and make lunch reservations for all of us.
Then Veronica continued to show us around. For the first time, I was in a winery when the skins were actually being pressed, a process performed in order to extract the last of the juice (well, technically, it's wine already). She offered me a glass of the freshly-pressed wine, which is more-or-less the final product minus aging and the flavors that are imbued therein. We continued down to where hundreds of barrels are kept and got to try a few of the wines straight from the barrel, a treat that always reminds me how darn lucky I am to have snuck my little foot in the door of an incredible industry. At this stage, none of the wines had been filtered, which is just how I like 'em. Veronica shared that, in fact, only a small handful of wines are filtered at all, while most are left with whatever sediment or cloudiness they currently posses. The whites, and some rosés are filtered, mainly because many consumers find the murkiness unappetizing (quel dommage).
After our tour of the cellar, we headed back to the palace where Miguel Angel had organized a cata of several wines from both Finca Allende and Finca Nueva. If I had to select those that I liked more, every time it would have been the "fun" wines from Finca Nueva; they just seemed more unique and more assertive. They seemed more like Miguel Angel himself.
After drinking what counts as far more than an aperitivo, Miguel Angel invited us to lunch where he brought with us two of his own Gran Reserva Bottles. I see why these are considered his "Pleasure Wines"- because they accompany so well other hedonistic pursuits like rich food, dirty jokes and musings about sexual liberation. I could have been listening to the Macarena for as many times as I heard "Dale a tu cuerpo la alegria".
After the wine glasses contained nothing but lagrimas against their sides and the plates had been wiped clean by the last bits of bread, we returned to the winery where snake-like tubes were still transporting wine from tank to tank to barrel. Miguel Angel insisted it would be OK to sneak away for a bit in order for us to see the town of Briones, home of his bodega. He was an excellent tour guide and he lead us through small, winding streets, into a church and then into a bar where several of his fellow winemaking amigos were drinking- ironically- anything but wine. I was reminded of Barnaby Tuttle, a winemaker in Portland who once said to me while bottling wine at 1am in the morning and drinking Budlight, "It takes a lot of bad beer to make good wine."
This certainly appeared true that night in Rioja and Miguel Angel would have undoubtedly agreed. However, had I asked him earlier that afternoon, his response would have probably been more like this: "To make good wine, it requires a good terroir. She will be your guide."
*Top right image from Aseuniv
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