La Rioja

I had heard talk of La Rioja and its wines before I visited Spain.  Linnell was the first to mention it.  After college, where we had become friends, she had spent one year working as an au pair in Barcelona, and another year in Valladolid as a teaching assistant.  When she returned to the States, she informed me that her favorite wines came from La Rioja.  A few short months later, I was in that very region, visiting my friend Jason as I made my way through Europe.

Just like Linnell and anyone else who has spent more than a few hours in Spain, Jason had developed a respect for the Rioja wines.  I quickly saw why.  In Spain, there are a few wine-producing regions, but none are regarded the way Rioja is.  Standing at the edge of the town of Tricio, where Jason lived, we looked down at the surrounding vineyards.  The valley stretched out around us and flamed with neat little rows of yellow, orange, and red vines.  The scenery was probably similar to the kind found in Spain’s other wine regions at that time of year, but the produce here was different, better.  The people of La Rioja know this, and are proud of it.  Their love for the very ground where they live, and all it produces—especially its famed wines—is contagious.  That pride alone could convince a visitor to love the tempranillos, crianzas, and reservas passed around at Rioja dinner tables.  Fortunately, though, the wines have a taste that lends credence to the delight these people take in their prized beverages.

The best of the bunch was a tempranillo made in a neighboring town and named after Tricio.  They called it Tritium, which is what the Romans called Tricio, and which was a hell of a lot better than “ashtray,” the name of the town where it was bottled.  Jason and his wife, Maite, had an entire case of the stuff left over from their wedding more than a year earlier.  We polished off a few bottles during my stay, and I decided to bring one home for the family to enjoy at Thanksgiving.  Everyone who tasted it loved it just as much as I did, and that bottle was empty before anyone had even finished their turkey. 

My dad enjoyed the Tritium so much that he tried to find it in the States.  He found one place in California that imports it, but none in Washington.  We still haven’t had a second bottle of it.  Thankfully, though, there are plenty of other tasty Rioja wines to be discovered here in the U.S.  More and more people seem to be gaining an appreciation for wines from all corners of the earth.  Just like I first began to do five years ago, when my friends in Buenos Aires introduced me to the malbec. 

The view from Tricio.