Transcript:
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Hello bonjour and welcome to your new Bonner Private Wines video where we learn together everything that you need to know about wine, weekly. I’m your host, Julien, Bordeaux trained wine maker, and today we’re continuing our exploration of the wine world in our wine in five series, five things that you absolutely need to know about all of the top wine regions around the world in about five minutes, or maybe a little more.
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Let’s see how I go about summarizing this wine region as much as possible. Remember, if you follow along our journey and subscribe to the channel, I will make of you a wine expert. So feel free to subscribe today in our second video of our new series. So you definitely catching it on time right now. Nice and early. We are discussing the most famous of all Spanish wine regions, namely Rioja.
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So let’s get into it. While they whine we wine.
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To fully understand the wine, what it tastes like and why it tastes like it does—which we’ll get into in a minute—you certainly need to have an overall understanding of a region’s geography. First. Rioja is located in northern Spain, not far away from the border with France, in fact, so it’s cooler than most other parts of Spain being quite close to the Atlantic Ocean.
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But the Rioja is protected from too many clouds and rains thanks to the sheltering Cantabrian Mountains, so the region spans 75 miles, resulting in a relatively diverse climate, different topographies and soil types, which we’ll get back to in a minute. It’s quite a large region indeed.
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Tempranillo is the most important grape at the heart of region’s best wines. It’s the core of any blend here. It makes abundantly fruity, relatively light wines for Spain. So let’s say with more finesse than pure power. Which is why Rioja is so appreciated by wine connoisseurs. Tempranillo has a special affinity with oak aging. A typical in traditional Rioja will then be a blend of mostly Tempranillo with one some Garnacha that adds body.
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Graciano. This is a fine Rioja specialty, prized for its aromas and strong acidity, which helps with the vivacity of the wines. And mazuelo, the Rioja name for Carignan, which gives tannins and color. Single varietals wines do exist if you—we had before, if you follow along our wine club, a delicious pure mazuelo that was a great opportunity to taste what a carignan single varietal is and tastes like from Rioja.
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They do exist, but mostly local wines or blends.
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Before we talk about the most expensive wine, in a brief word on the three subregions of how they enjoy a diversity of soils, terroirs and microclimates, each making wines of really unique personality and character. Rioja Alta the high Rioja is located west in Rioja, so it has a more Atlantic climate and its soils are mostly iron rich clay mixed with some limestone.
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The Rioja Alavesa is the smallest of the subregions and often considered among the finest. It also experiences a cooler climate at a higher elevation, though, and very cold limestone chalky soils. The Rioja Baja or the Lower Rioja is the eastern subregion with a more continental climate and much warmer and drier climate due to its inland location, so it’s lower in elevation as well.
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Tempranillo is at its finest in the cooler alta and alavesa regions, while the Garnacha, Garnacha, Grenache and the carignan are bigger and better because it’s warmer at the Lower Rioja Baja area.
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Rioja wines are split into four classification levels: young or joven, crianza, Reserva, and Grande Reserva. A joven will have no oak aging or very little, shorter than six months. Rioja crianza, and crianza actually means oak aging, is aged for six months in oak barrels. Rioja traditionally used predominantly American oak because it’s cheaper and it gives more coconut and vanilla.
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But it’s not as refined as French oak. But things are now moving towards using more French trees in Rioja because it’s a little bit better. Reserva wines are one of those great quality wines that needs to be aged for at least three years, with one of those years being in oak barrels and in two years in bottle before you can actually buy it.
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Gran Reserva wines must be aged for a minimum of five years, with two of those years being within an oak cask or a barrel. This classification establishes somewhat of an hierarchy in size and prices, because a Grand Reserva is not only aged for longer, so it’s more expensive to produce, but it’s also going to be made with higher quality grapes.
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A better selection of grapes to make it with more concentration of flavors and tannins. So there are grapes and longer aging, higher prices and quality. Roja does make decent rosé wines, but nothing too remarkable in general. The white wines of Rioja are a traditional style here, generally traditionally in oaky oxidative style, although now they’re moving toward a more fresher, modern acidic style of white wines.
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The most expensive wines are: number three, Alvaro Palacios Quiñón de Valmira, this is a single vineyard made with Garnacha and 10% other traditional varieties grown at 600m in altitude, so quite high fermented with some fruit clusters with indigenous yeasts. Great attention to detail in the winemaking that sells. At around $450 a bottle. Number two is Marques de Riscal
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Frank Gehry selection an insanely precise selection of 80 plus year old vineyards of Tempranillo, sorted berry by berry. At about $550 a bottle. And the most expensive Rioja wine is Sierra Cantabria Magico, magical, made from a small three acre vineyard spared from the phylloxera crisis at the beginning of the 20th century. That gives birth, I’m told, to an incredible wine, that you need to spend about $800 a bottle to be able to taste it.
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And now it’s time for us to rate Rioja so we can compare it with other prestigious wines in the world in the future, and place Rioja as our second wine appellation in our Bonner Private Wines appellation leaderboard.
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Quality gets very high in Rioja, but it’s a massive wine region that also produces a lot of fairly cheap vino. You essentially pay for what you get, as we’ll discuss more about in a second, it gets a seven out of ten. Prestige is high, being by far the most famous Spanish wine region. So if you pull out a bottle of it, chances are many you won’t exactly know whether you bought an expensive one or a cheap vino.
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They won’t even know cheap regions are a thing. So non-wine connoisseurs will be impressed. But Rioja is not 100% just illustrous wines, so it gets an eight out of ten. Prices of Roja wines a solid. But even the most expensive ones we discussed aren’t nearly as high as many Burgundy wines, or many top Bordeaux’s, or even compared to many California wines.
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Again, it’s inconsistent and nothing to legendary here, so it gets a six out of ten. Rioja wines aren’t very scarce at all, most famous bodegas are big, they often buy a lot of grapes from thousands of wine growers, or hundreds, and many produce millions of bottles. Top single vineyards can be rare, but they’re not always that famous or in demand, so we have to go with a five out of ten.
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Finally, our quality price ratio. If you buy a relatively affordable Riviera, not one of the top ones, is it going to be any good value? Generally, yes. And again, you get what you pay for. And I find very hard to be very consistent in the correlation between quality and price. It’s one of the region’s strong features, I would say a very cheap Rioja is not the best value because you pay for the name a little bit.
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So it’s more expensive than a region that is not that famous. But from $20 to $30 upwards, quality price ratio compared to other regions gets pretty good. So they get an eight out of ten and our grand score is 34 out of 50 points. Rioja today was our second appellation on our leaderboard, and it’s just not as consistent as Pauillac in Bordeaux.
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But if you want to see how wines like champagne, Chateau Burgundy or Napa wines compare in the future, make sure to subscribe to never miss any other upload, any new uploads from us, keep watching the channel to learn more about wine, here are a couple of videos that are absolutely recommend watching next and I will see you soon in the wonderful world of wine.
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Cheers!
