{"id":1451,"date":"2010-10-18T16:19:32","date_gmt":"2010-10-18T16:19:32","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.wineanorak.com:\/wineblog\/?p=1451"},"modified":"2010-10-18T17:12:25","modified_gmt":"2010-10-18T17:12:25","slug":"rioja-day-1","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.wineanorak.com:\/wineblog\/spain\/rioja-day-1","title":{"rendered":"Rioja, day 1"},"content":{"rendered":"

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First day in Rioja. Three very different wineries visited. First, Finca Allende: modern, terroir driven, with lovely wines, including the brilliant Calvario, a single-vineyard offering. Good white, too. Aurus, their top wine, a little too rich and oak-influenced for me.<\/p>\n

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\nSecond, La Rioja Alta. One of the traditional Haro wineries, making older-styled wines. But these are excellent older-styled wines, with some elegance. Lovely Arano 2001, sturdy but delicious Ardanza 2001. Gran Reservas \u2013 1997 904 and 1995 890 \u2013 both brilliantly aromatic.<\/p>\n

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Finally, Valdemar, whose star turn is working with the ‘alternative’ Rioja varities. Conde de Valdemar Garnacha is brilliantly fresh and focused with nice pure fruit. Well priced at \u00a310. Inspiracion Graciano is a superb interpretation of this variety that’s dense, focused and structured with fresh, spicy fruit tempered by nice acidity. Graciano rocks! White Tempranillo is really interesting \u2013 a new variety just approved, which makes very rich, fruit-laden whites. The oddity here is the Maturana, a new old variety rediscovered. Their Inspiracion Coleccion Varietales is 100% Maturana, and it tastes like a really good Carmenere.<\/p>\n

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The pictures. Top, inside a basket press. Below this is the view of the vineyards over the roof of the Allende winery in Briones. Then some harvesting of high-end grapes at Allende – this is probably going to be Aureus. Directly above and bottom, racking the barrels at La Rioja Alta. There are 43 000 of them – and they are racked by gravity into a clean barrel. Below: grapes at Allende. Looking good.<\/p>\n

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First day in Rioja. Three very different wineries visited. First, Finca Allende: modern, terroir driven, with lovely wines, including the brilliant Calvario, a single-vineyard offering. Good white, too. Aurus, their…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[116,40],"tags":[402,371],"class_list":["post-1451","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-rioja","category-spain","tag-rioja","tag-spain"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.wineanorak.com:\/wineblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1451","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.wineanorak.com:\/wineblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.wineanorak.com:\/wineblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.wineanorak.com:\/wineblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.wineanorak.com:\/wineblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1451"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"https:\/\/www.wineanorak.com:\/wineblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1451\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1470,"href":"https:\/\/www.wineanorak.com:\/wineblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1451\/revisions\/1470"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.wineanorak.com:\/wineblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1451"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.wineanorak.com:\/wineblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1451"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.wineanorak.com:\/wineblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1451"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}