In this (the fiftieth!) episode of 1WineDude TV, I take a few hundred years of bizarre Rioja wine tradition head-on, and live to tell about it (though my clothes clearly get the worst of things), as part of my recent jaunt to the Rioja winemaking region with Vibrant Rioja.

Herein, you will witness a great deal of wine (don’t worry, it wasn’t Gran Reserva, trust me) being spilled on (probably drunken and/or quite hungover) Spaniards, a little bit of questionable behavior by said Spaniards (sorry, couldn’t resist including that moment, because I’m just not nice enough of a guy), and a whole lot of fun being had by all.

And yes, I know the video is crazy, shaky (it was a wine wartime correspondence, after all) and hazy (the camera was wrapped in a hotel shower cap for its protection – and yours, I think – for reasons that will become very obvious once you start watching). So… go easy on the camera-people, and enjoy!

1WineDude.com TV Episode 50: Haro Wine Battle 2012!

Cheers!

Welcome to the Weekly Wine Quiz!

Based on feedback from ever-so-vocal-and-intelligent peeps like you, I do not supply the quiz answer directly in the post – you will need to tune back in later in the comments section for the answer. Which once again might be delayed, since this week I’m on the road (yes, again) only this time I’m in Crete. But that change of location doesn’t change the theme of the current round of wine quiz questions, which are focused on the Rioja winemaking region…

A Little Help From Their Friends

Rioja experienced a boost as a winemaking region when growers from what country came to Navarra in the 1870s (bonus bragging rights points can be scored by also explaining why they came)?

A.  England
B.  France
C.  Germany
D.  Hungary

Cheers – and good luck!

Welcome to the Weekly Wine Quiz!

Based on feedback from ever-so-vocal-and-intelligent peeps like you, I do not supply the quiz answer directly in the post – you will need to tune back in later in the comments section for the answer. Which once again might be delayed, since this week I’m on the road in Rioja��� which is where today’s quiz will be taking you!

Prepare For Battle!

Which city in Spain’s Rioja winemaking region is famous for its annual ritual in which attendees douse each other with wine?

• A.  Logrono
• B.  Calahorra
• C.  Najera
• D.  Haro

Cheers – and good luck!

This week, I’m traveling through the Spanish wine region of Rioja (a guest of the Vibrant Rioja campaign), and will be attempting to report on events therein via twitter and FB as they transpire, Internet connectivity and available free time permitting, of course. It’s an all-blogger trip, which isn’t the norm for this sort of thing and so should be an interesting change of pace as I hit the apex of my 2012 Summer Of Going Just About Everyplace (after Rioja, I’ll be heading over to Crete after only a short break, presumably because I like visiting debt-ravaged European economies).

I’ll admit that I said yes to this trip primarily because Rioja is friggin’ beautiful. I’m also geeky over their white wines, which have funky, refreshing kung-fu. Also, apparently I’ll be participating in a time-honored tradition (that’s a European term for “huge party”) in which people douse one another with wine (trust me, I will be trying very hard to get that on video without rendering my vid cam totally useless), and have been advised to bring clothes “that I don’t mind leaving in Rioja forever.”

But I also accepted it out of regular ol’ curiosity, specifically around how well the Old School (roughly translated as “age the hell out of Tempranillo in big oak casks & then wait for it to mature in about a gazillion years”) and New School (“make modern, silky reds out of Tempranillo that are ready to drink now”) methods of fine red winemaking are (or aren’t!) getting along over there.

I think that we wine nerds are prone to pick on Rioja reds as being a bit played-out, and I’ve certainly done my fair share of complaining that lots of Rioja Tempranillo tastes less like Tempranillo than it does the oak that it’s been aged in for a gazillion months. But in doing so we forget that the “modern” Rioja wine industry is, from the point of view of the USA, hardly thirty years old…

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