1922 Marques de Riscal, Reserva

WINE TALK
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[resizeableimage=400,400]http://hogsheadwine.files.wordpress.com/2014/03/riscal2.jpg[/resizeableimage]

I have lately been reading other posts about old Rioja. This got me excited so this weekend a group of us are getting together to drink 6 bottles of Rioja from 1950-1970. What is amazing is this past weekend I had dinner with Mannie Berk where we drank a lovely bottle of 1922 Marques de Riscal, Reserva. This bottle still had good color and was both deep in the nose and the mouth. We drank it over several hours from a decanter and it in no way fell apart. I never knew you could have fruit in a 92 year old wine!

It is a particularly interesting vintage since the fruit was sourced from post-phylloxera vines which had been replanted between 1902 and 1910. There was cholera in 1917 causing a labor shortage so only half of the 1917 vintage was harvested. And finally the vintage precedes the Consejo Regulador. 1910, 1920, 1922, and 1925 were considered the best vintages of the first two decades of the 20th century. I now understand why 1922 was included. You may read more historical bits in my post:

“um pronunciado perfume de violeta” : From Madeira to Ancient Rioja with Mannie Berk

Best,

Aaron

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Thanks for the posting, Aaron! This and Neal’s recent Rioja postings have me jazzed to try some old, very old Riojas. I recently had two classified growth Bordeaux from that same vintage, 1920, and they were gorgeous. They were very alive and did not degenerate quickly on opening. They actually improved for a couple hours. I just looked at a Bordeaux vintage chart, and at least according to that chart, a Bordeaux had some very decent vintages in the 1920s.

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You are welcome. Yeah, this bottle reset my frame of reference. Glad to read your 1920 Bordeaux were gorgeous. I don’t know how easy it is to find bottles of very old Rioja but it would be fun to try them. Let me know if you drink any!

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When I visited Marques de Riscal in 2010, they presented a vertical tasting of Gran Reservas that included 1870, 1883, and 1889 among others. Of course these wines had never been moved but even so, they were in amazing condition in terms of color, aroma, and flavor. For those few of you who still have access, my notes are archived in TWA.

MrBigJ

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This particular bottle of 1922 came from a deep cellar in Spain so it had good storage. But clearly from Riscal directly is the best. To taste the 1870 produced under Mr. Pineau and also from the very beginning of this style of Rioja is an amazing experience. Do you have any pictures of the bottles?

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I was less computer-savvy then. Today I could probably do it. They were in hand blown glass. The corks were removed with heated port tongs that cleanly sheared the bottle to avoid having to deal with the ancient corks.

MrBigJ

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Sounds like a wonderful experience!

Just love fine old Rioja, although I never had anything even approaching this old!

Alex R.

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Nice one!

Sounds great.

Count me as a big fan of old Rioja also.

And the price! Fantastic value wines that really can age…

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One of my themes this year will be to research and write more about the early history of Rioja and drink more old Rioja! The prices are attractive. I was amazed I can afford bottles from the 1950s and 1960s.

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Dr Jay (if I am correct), I remember having a terrific and surprisingly young bottle of 26 Riscal with you maybe 5 or 6 years ago…

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Aaron - one of the interesting things is that those old Riscals contain Cabernet Sauvignon in addition to Tempranillo. In the mid-late 1800s, Murrietta and Riscal independently tried to bring French winemaking to Rioja, making a modern style, which is what people in the US consider “traditional”. The big houses bought grapes from the locals, made the wine, and stored them in barrels, much as the French chateaux did. So in a way, Riscal established what we consider Rioja today.

A bit later, when phylloxera was devastating the French vineyards, many French winemakers came to Rioja, bringing their know-how. Remember that trade between England and France had been going on since pre-Roman times, particularly from Bordeaux, which was a port rather than a wine-producing region.

Either when the Marques de Riscal came back from his travels, or when the French came over, Cab was introduced to the region. It’s not clear exactly who brought it, but Riscal always had a bit of Cab in it. It arrived before Garnacha, which a few years ago Mr. Parker mistakenly thought was a very important Rioja grape, hosting a Garnacha tasting in Rioja. Today it’s not used in Rioja. They do allow Garnacha however, because that’s an indigenous Spanish grape, unlike the imported Cab.

I don’t recall that I’ve had the 1922, but I’ve had a few from the 1920s and plenty others from the early and mid 1900s and there are few wines that hold up as well. In fact, if you were wise, you loaded up on the 2001 Riscal Reservas, which were sometimes going for 9.99 a bottle!

Whether the current wines will age the same way is another question because Riscal has created additional lines and they’ve stopped using some of the grape sources. I’ve asked them whether the changes will affect the wine and of course they said that they didn’t believe so, but I think we’ll have to see.

At any rate, there are few wineries I can think of with the pedigree and quality of Riscal. It’s easy to put out a few barrels of premium wine. But they put out millions of bottles of good wine every year. One of the world’s great wineries IMO.

So if you’re going to write about Rioja, there are a few tidbits for you.

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The '25 is particularly stunning given it was a terrific vintage and you do see it around fairly frequently. Of course, at this stage it’s bottle to bottle. A bottle I opened five years ago was wonderful, though a bottle I opened for Victor de la Serna this fall when he was in town, was just so so.

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Greg,

Thanks for the tidbits. Check out my blog post about the wine, the link is at the top. I have cited information from several 19th century publications and included some historic ads and pictures from the early 1900s. There is definitely amazing details out there. Any pictures of these early wines? Our cork was a bit destroyed by the somm, I extracted the rest. I can tell it was branded which George Rainbird noted in 1966.