ABEL MENDOZA, MALVASIA 2019
WHITE & SPARKLING RIOJA: A REGION IN MICROCOSM
No article on Rioja diversity would be complete without some mention of the region’s white wines. It’s a part of the market that accounts for a mere 9% of total production, but within that small percentage you can view in microcosm many of the developments that have transformed Rioja as a whole.
This is a sector with space for the great, almost absurdly long-lived classics of the oak-aged old school: the inimitable, multi-faceted, oxidative greatness of Viña Tondonia Gran Reserva Blanco or Marqués de Murrieta Castillo Ygay.
But it also features a variety of superb but more conventionally oaked white wines, such as the almost Burgundian likes of Palacios Remondo Plácet, a 100% Viura aged for 10 months in oak foudres, or Finca Allende Blanco, which adds a little Malvasia to the French barrelfermented yet luminous mix. There’s also a wealth of perfectly drinkable, if unexceptional unoaked whites, of which CVNE’s Monopole Unoaked Blanco is a fully fruited cut-above.
White Rioja also extends to its small but, at times, surprisingly good quality sparkling wines, with the first few bottles from the official new regional sparkling DO emerging on the market in 2020, although the best of the Rioja fizz breed (Muga’s Conde de Haro) has chosen to stay in the Cava DO for now.
The article by Sarah Jane Evans MW (see p50) covers white Rioja in much greater detail than I have space for here. But if I were to pick one white Rioja to represent the theme of diversity, and its contemporary combination of modern winemaking knowhow, tradition and a new-found obsession with terroir, it would be Abel Mendoza’s delightful take on Malvasia. Produced by a winemaker with an encyclopaedic knowledge of the vineyards of Rioja Alavesa, it is drawn from dozens of tiny plots, and expresses a local variety with the most subtle shading of barrel fermentation and five months’ maturation in new French oak.