Posted from CellarTracker
You don’t see a lot of notes on Marques de Caceres much anymore, but in the 80’s-90’s, their basic Rioja was all the rage and seemingly available everywhere. Sounds like they are still doing okay, despite the plethora of producers available now.
Agreed, the late 80’s and 90’s bottles were my Rioja introduction.
I think they figured out early on that it was ok to have some fruit with what had been a woody DOC.
Don’t think I’ve tasted recent vintages in a long while. I used to buy the roses occasionally, but they were pretty blah I thought.
They were only founded in the 1970s. Enrique Forner came from a family that had been in the wine business, but because they were on the wrong side, they got exiled to France as a result of the Spanish Civil War. Enrique spent a long time there, got into the wine business, and finally in the early 1960s, bought two chateaux in Bordeaux - Château Camensac and Château Larose Trintaudon. If you look at their labels, they will suddenly make sense - the colors of Spain are red and yellow.
Then he came back to Spain and bought some property in Rioja. He asked some French acquaintances for help - Emile Peynaud first and then later Michel Roland. Their first release was 1975 and since there weren’t many producers from Spain imported to the US at the time, and in fact weren’t really that many producers in Spain anyway, the wine became one of the better-known Spanish wines in the US. With the growth of the industry, they’re not discussed all that much any more, but then again, most Spanish wine isn’t discussed all that much anyway, other than LdH or people who like to say that Spain is a good source of cheap wine.