I’m starting to come across more and more travel blogs writing about visits to La Rioja.

This is a great sign that this lovely region is finally making waves in a more international travel arena. So far international visitors to the region are relatively small, especially compared to some other well known wine regions in the world, but the flip side is that those that come now are ‘pioneers’ with a new story to tell their now-very-jealous friends.

I came across a post called “Something about La Rioja” this morning, talking about Laguardia, Haro, wineries and the food of the region. I particularly liked the introduction:

I love to search for charming little places around the world, the type that do not usually fall under the average tourist’s wish-list, places I wish I could savour all by myself and hide from all you other thirsty travelers out there. But, alas, here I am in the magical wine region of La Rioja in Spain, and I am about to-very reluctantly may I say-divulge my precious secret to all.

I must admit I partly came across the post because of the review of the visit to Dinastia Vivanco’s winery and museum:

As a grand finale, I visit the Dinastia Vivanco Bodega, in Briones (www.dinastiavivanco.com). I am speechless. This goes way beyond my expectations.

Thank you for your selflessness in sharing the word! Maybe more travel writers will check out the region too. I shall go on a travel blog hunt, but feel free to drop me a comment with links to your own reviews of the region (travel related only please).

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Here area selection of my photos from Tapas Fantasticas London 2009. A proper round up coming soon.

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The conclusion is inescapabale - even Nature loves Rioja!

Thousands of people made it to Brick Lane for the show and even waited in line to get in. I’d take my hat off to them, except I had forgotten it at home.

The Monte Clavijo, Castillo de Clavijo and the Castillo San Lorenzo wines all performed well, but in the intense sun the white and red were the best performers. I even had several people tell me that the Monte Clavijo Rosado (the 2008) was their favourite wine of the event which is nice to hear.

In fact, it was so hot, we had to put even the Crianza and Reserva red wines in the ice bucket. Most were happy with the results (it is much more refreshing to have a red wine that is cool enough to taste compared to a flabby, warm wine) even if they were a bit shocked at first.

Lots more to come tomorrow.

I’ll post lots of great photos later in the week, but here are a couple favourites:

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You can read my 2008 Tapas Fantasticas review or check out some of the photos.

Unfortunately, last year I was rather preoccupied with the imminent birth of my son so I was only there briefly so I didn’t get a chance to really make the most of it. This year I will be there pouring the wines from Criadores de Rioja, including the Castillo San Lorenzo Rioja Reserva 2004.

This year’s edition is this weekend - 27 & 28 June 2009 (11:30 - 17:30) in Brick Lane Yard, 146 Brick Lane. There are over 20 wineries and more than a dozen restaurants attending. All the information on where it is being held, what restaurants are participating from Rioja and London, and which wineries will be pouring their wines, is on the Wines from Rioja site:

http://www.winesfromrioja.co.uk/tapasfantasticas2009/london.html

Forget Glastonbury! Ignore the Lions Rugby! Boycott Tweetcamp! Come to Brick Lane to eat some lovely tapas and drink Rioja instead!

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In many ways, it wasn’t a discussion as much as a series of comments around the theme of how Rioja should present itself to the world, and more importantly, how it might go about offering a broader range of wines to consumers.

[for more professional reporting on this event, read Rebecca Gibb's take]

The key fact, in terms of the topic, is that Tempranillo plantings represent 78% of ALL vineyard plantings in Rioja. Without any Tempranillo, you’d scarcely have enough for a decent dinner party, never mind to sell wines to the entire world as happens now.

The question was really interpreted as whether Rioja should attach its brand more clearly to the Tempranillo varietal/brand or not.

The strongest argument for this idea came from Maria Martínez from Bodegas Montecillo, known as the “Queen of Tempranillo”. In her opinion Tempranillo was THE vehicle for expressing the personality of Rioja, and by this I take her to mean her sense of its place, its terroir. She admitted that many other regions, and even countries, could grow Tempranillo, but the unique mix of weather, soil and historical wine making practices in Rioja gave it a real personality, whilst most other wines turned out to be “manufactured”, “Coca Cola” wines. I admire her conviction, and her wines.

However, what she is discussing is more than the varietal mix of the wine. She did not argue against using other classic grapes to blend with Tempranillo, only that it should have “personality”. Rioja’s strong, and much loved personality, is what consumers around the world love.

Follow-up presentations by Juan Carlos Sancha of Viña Ijalba and Victor Fuentes of Baron de Ley, were ostensibly a counter-argument, but in fact followed the same theme. Rioja used to grow a variety of grapes, in 1912 there were 44, but today there are only 7 - and in the case of Tempranillo, only 3 different clones. This means that the region is HIGHLY dependent on a small range of varieties, that it has lost (permanently through extinction in many cases) many indigenous varieties. It wasn’t an argument for making Rioja from something other than Tempranillo, but a plea for experimentation, to genetic diversity, to a uniqueness for Rioja that was defined by something more abstract than a single variety.

There are producers such as Dinastia Vivanco and Viña Ijalba who are trying to showcase the personality of each of the key Rioja grapes, and examples such as Baron de Ley who are even planting 28 hectares of a newly approved, but classic indigenous grape called Maturana Tinta.

Most of the assembled audience agreed that Rioja risked more by linking itself to Tempranillo than it gained - opening the doors to copycat regions selling similar grapes, confusing consumers who only have limited wine knowledge, and not doing anything to sell more white or rose wines.

The only real point of contention seemed to revolve around price. A representative from an importer with a focus on supermarket brands, and Melissa Draycott, head of wine buying at First Quench, pointed out that consumers loved Rioja and only really wanted a good Quality/Price ratio. Rioja had delivered in the past and should focus on this for the future.

The implication of this is that all the discussion of “Personality”, of genetic diversity and of new plantings of recovered indigenous or international varieties was likely to lead to more high priced, premium wines and distract from the business of selling more volume. I will look at this is depth another time as I think it is important, but most of the audience agreed that Rioja needed to be more than a provider of generic “soap bars” (comparing wine marketing to the success of P&G etc.).

All in all, it was good to have the opportunity to hear from some interesting Rioja personalities, and to taste their wines. Hopefully we can use these discussions to define a clearer path for Rioja to innovate without losing its special place in the consumer’s hearts and wallets.

More soon.

————

The full list of speakers was: Ricardo Aguiriano, Marketing Director for the Rioja Consejo; Maria Martínez from Bodegas Montecillo; Juan Carlos Sancha of Viña Ijalba; Victor Fuentes, Managing Director at Baron de Ley; and Melissa Draycott, Thresher. Rafael Vivanco from Dinastia Vivanco was supposed to join them but was unfortunately unable to attend.

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The barrel cellars at Bodegas Campillo, Laguardia

My friend Wink Lorch runs an excellent wine travel resource called WineTravelGuides.com where independent travellers with an interest in wine can prepare their trips by downloading guide to great destinations in France, Italy, and now Spain. Not everyone wants to go on a fully organised wine trip, although there is a lot to be said for these when it comes to wine holidays (as they come with driver included), but if you are looking for the flexibility of planning your own dream trip to Tuscany, Bordeaux or Rioja, then these are a great place to look.

You can now read not 1, but 2 different itineraries for Rioja written by another long-term friend of mine, Tom Perry. Tom has lived and worked in Rioja for a long time and he certainly knows his stuff.

One guide centres around Haro in the North, and the other around Logroño, the capital of La Rioja in the centre of the region. Both provide great local information such as maps and history as well as listing excellent wineries to visit, and a range of restaurants and hotels that could be useful. I thoroughly recommend getting hold of a copy if you are planning on some independent travel to Rioja.

Unfortunately, I do have one issue with them. In attempting to justify creating two separate guides, each has a separate list of wineries, destinations and suggestions. This is great, but only if you buy BOTH. If you buy only one or the other, you miss out on SO much valuable information and suggestions. Rioja is not a large region by ANY means (you can get from one end to the other in about an hour) and can easily reach all parts of the region wherever you are based. Would you not want to visit Lopez de Heredia (in Haro) or the Dinastia Vivanco Museum (in Briones) just because you chose to be based in Logroño, only 30 minutes away? Or vice versa, would you want to miss out on the tapas of Calle Laurel or the wineries of Laguardia just because you were staying in Haro?

I guess it is a minor point as I believe you can get a good discount for buying both guides together, and I’d hate to put people off these guides because buying two here costs more than one elsewhere, but I do love the variety of wine tourism opportunities in Rioja and I want to ensure you get the most out of it.

If you are planning on travelling to Rioja, or any of this intrigues you, please do check them out. I’m sure I can encourage Wink to offer readers of Thirst for Rioja some special discount on these reports, so if you do contact her, please let her know you are a reader here - you never know!

Also, if you do buy these or are planning a trip to Rioja, do drop me a line and let me know. If I’m in the area, we could even meet up for a glass of good wine

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I’m a firm believer that for Rioja to sell well, Rioja producers have to help to promote the entire Spanish wine category. The more that everyday wine consumers learn about Spain and its wonderful wines, the more we will ALL sell of our wines. Rioja is by far the best known, and therefore the one that sells the most, but there are lots of other wines to try from this great country.

As promised in a previous post, I’m going to be offering some pretty stunning maps of all the Spanish wine regions (the most up-to-date on the market as it happens) - which also includes Portugal and all neighbouring regions in France and even North Africa - as a promotion. The first 6 Independent Merchants that choose to list two or more of the Dinastia Vivanco wine range will get one of these maps sent to them FREE so that they can be displayed in the shop to educate and entertain staff and customers.

It may be a small extra benefit (I do offer to come along and train staff and maybe even do a tasting with customers as well, you know) but maybe one bonus that will make a difference.

If you are in this business, come along to the Bibendum stand at Wines from Spain and ask them about it.

Stay tuned for a chance to win one for yourself as well even if you do not sell wine for a living.

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You could answer the question, “How effective is wine sponsorship?” in several different ways, so maybe I need to clarify this further.

Vivanco wines chilling at twestival

1. Did the sponsorship achieve the organiser’s aim? Was it effective for THEM?

Well, I think this is the easy one. Instead of offering an indifferent wine selected mainly by price, as happens on so many occasions, we thought we’d get involved so that those who had invested their time and energy (and money) to support this cause (and bravely queued in the cold & snow) had a decent wine to drink. Every single comment I heard that night about the wine was positive - and not everyone knew I had helped to arrange it!

I hope that at least a few conversations out there were sparked by the wine. I know I met several really interesting people, some of whom I already follow, many that I don’t, just by talking about the wine. I even got the chance to buy Imogen Heap a glass of wine (I thought it impolite to hang around to ask her if she liked it - Imogen, any feedback?)

There was a slight issue at one point where the volume of people arriving meant that we weren’t allowed back into the section that had the wine bar, but we coped!

Before the event we said;

Sponsoring wine at such events is a tricky task. No-one comes for the wine itself (usually), and if it is doing its job, its major contribution is to a sense of fun, well-being and relaxed interaction for all those at the event, and in this case helping to raise lots of money for Charity:Water. This means that the wine itself may not be remembered.

On this basis, I hope we did succeed and help the charity & organisers, but I wonder whether we did actually manage to create some lasting impression?

2. Did the sponsorship achieve the sponsor’s aim? Was it effective for US?

Here, I desperately need your input.

I don’t want to sound callous or too commercial about this, but sponsorship has to offer value back to the sponsor if brands are to continue to support events such as Twestival. I don’t think anyone would hold that against us.

My simple objective was to get influential people, those on Twitter like you and me, talking about Dinastia Vivanco wines and maybe, just maybe, remembering the name amongst the thousands of available wines in the UK. We also want to help foster an interest in wine, a wine culture, online that helps individuals appreciate wine even more.

To achieve this we also made a number of videos (including a great short wine documentary) with Documentally to give you an idea of what Dinastia Vivanco are about instead of bombarding visitors with leaflets. We had hoped to show this on the night, but in the end that proved impossible.

I would LOVE to hear some feedback from those who were at the London Twestival as to what they thought of the wine. Any comment is useful. It represents the kind of honest customer feedback that Social Media excels at providing, and brands should be encouraging.

To incentivise you a little, I’m prepared to contribute another £1 to charity:water for each person’s comment made on this blog before Monday 23rd Feb* - whether it is a review, feedback, memory, suggestion or question.

I really look forward to hearing what you thought of the wines, and if you’ve had a chance to see the video, whether you’re intrigued enough to consider visiting.

Congratulations again to @amanda, @evarley and everyone else involved with London Twestival, and thank you to Charity:Water for giving us a way to make a difference in the world.

=========

* just in case, my only ‘terms’ for this offer are that 1) you were at London Twestival, 2) that the comment is about the wine in some way (comments about the beer or anything else are welcome, but not my goal), and just to limit my exposure (anyone remember Hoover flights?), 3) this is for the first 100 comments (don’t expect this will come into play, but you never know how things might get out of control)

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However, I’m very excited to say that we now have a video, albeit featuring my less-than-photogenic face a little too much, that gives you a greater flavour of the Dinastia Vivanco Museum of the Culture of Wine, and of the Winery as well.

It was created by Christian Payne (@documentally) and I want to thank him so much for getting the raw footage edited and online so quickly.

The main reason we made this video now is that Thirst for Rioja and Dinastia Vivanco will be sponsoring the London Twestival this week (12 February, 2009) and I wanted to have a video that those who attend will be able to watch to see who was sponsoring the wine, and why.

I hope you enjoy it, and please do leave me and Christian, your thoughts and comments.

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