Should you ask who could be the best Ambassador of Rioja wines, she will (probably) be the first to raise her hand. Her full name has long been learned by everyone interested in Spain (in general) and Rioja (in particular).
For me it was an opportunity to finally pay Maria José of Viña Tondonia back for babysitting me on one occasion in the town of Haro, the true wine capital of Rioja. Tondonia is a rare example of how aged graceful Riojas can be discovered for money many would consider ridiculous.
Maria José, together with her sister Mercedes and brother Julio, operate the Bodega (well, the Viña, which is technically a “vineyard”). With an annual production of about 350 thousand bottles she took me through the dungeons of the famous Haro estate, her truly Spanish voice echoes between the tunnels that run under the Ebro River and actually connect the winery with its neighbours (you can call them competitors too).
Her direct speech follows.
“People know little about the history of Rioja. There are 23 estates in Haro and it is one of the largest concentrations of wineries that are over 100 years old. Together with us are Jerez de la Frontera, Porto and Champagne’s Epernay. And I always explain that in this region there could be many more of them had they not disappeared. We are wineries that have survived since the first crisis. And the first crisis in Rioja happened in 1899, when we “lost” Cuba. All these wineries appeared as a reaction to the consequences of the raging phylloxera, oidium and mildew in France. Phylloxera moved from the south of Spain very quickly and destroyed a lot of vineyards: the dry climate of the country only contributed to this.
Rioja was born when the phylloxera first destroyed Burgundy, then it moved towards Alsace and Bordeaux, spread to Spain through Catalonia. And then the Bordolese came here: they taught us how to make wine, we began to supply it to France and the Spanish colonies, especially Cuba. In 1899, the colonies were finally lost, as well as the clients of the wineries which simply ceased to exist.
We are one of those who survived this first crisis, who survived the First World War, who survived the Civil War and the Second World War. The worst of all was the Сivil War, but the Second World War also made a lot of damage. Until 1896 we worked on without electricity at all. We still have a destemmer machine from that time, some of its parts were still made of iron, not stainless steel.
By the way, few people know why iron cannot be used when working with grapes and wine. If the wine has a high iron content, it can cause health problems, but you really need to drink a lot — and people used to drink like that.
When my great-great-grandfather Rafael discovered that his son was trying to forge his signature he accused him of lacking his own character. Look at the photo: since then, his son, my great-grandfather, dressed completely different from his father. My great-great-grandfather was born in Chile, he studied at a Jesuit school and then escaped from it, fought on the side of the Carlists, who lost the war in 1873, then went to France, where he studied international trade. He wanted to go back to Chile, but his mother forced him to work in France. The company went bankrupt and the owners left France, he had to deal with the liquidation of the company, then he met the company’s creditors who had stated a new wine business. They offered him a job and taught him how to make wine, but my great-great-grandfather had a business background.
When he started building a winery in Rioja, he sought advice from famous French chateaux – D’Isssan, Margaux, Laffite.
But the French also told him, “Rafael, you will not learn how to make wine until you buy your own vineyards.” Therefore he bought vineyards also on the advice of the French with whom he maintained contact all his life. He was a man of ideas, he wanted to make the best wine in Spain, El Rioja Supreme, “the best Rioja”, and the best Rioja had to be from Viña Tondonia.
The name of the estate comes from the Latin for “rounded”, due to the rounded bend of the Ebro River that it makes around our vineyards. In the 18th century this peninsula, formed by a bend in the river, was called Tondon. Of its four vineyards, Tondonia was the largest and was the source of the most elegant wines. In the historic wineries of Haro — CVNE, Bilbainas — you will hear that we have a strong French influence here. This influence comes from Bordeaux and — to a much lesser extent — from Burgundy. And in Bordeaux, from Graves, where Merlot was stylistically much closer to Pinot Noir than to Cabernet. Notice how small are the Cabernet plantings in Rioja, only Marques de Riscal revived the variety years later.
My great-great-grandfather never finished building the winery. He wanted to sell two million bottles of Tondonia Reserva, the same “Supreme Vino”. Today people are going crazy over our Gran Reserva and the white wines. His dream was to make fine and elegant wines, he knew a lot about it. We still make wine like we did 100 years ago. Look at these barrels, look at the presses, look at the grape boxes. We make wine from about 110 hectares of vineyards, although we could do from 170. Growth is limited by the fact that everything is done by hand. In addition to vineyards, we have forests, vegetables and chickens. Chickens, by the way, are very useful — eggs are used for fining wine and guano is used for compost. My father kept chickens right at the winery, but we took them to the vineyards.
Huge barrels are for aging wine, not for fermentation, each is 64,000 liters, 50,000 kilograms of fermenting juice, and we have no temperature control here to remove the heat of fermentation.
Our white wines are inspired by Graves. The truth is that here in Rioja no one understands them.
Fortunately we are now selling them through allocations, many people know these wines, and the demand for them is huge. We make 50 thousand bottles of them, in some years much less. Of the reds, Viña Tondonia Reserva is 14,000 bottles, and Gran Reserva is only 4,000, very small volumes. Wines like Cubillo are just as good as the Reserves, which we focus on the most, we just can’t keep up with them every year. It is interesting that people like the wines that we make in small volumes, but it’s more difficult to sell them.
Our cellars have very high humidity which is necessary for proper maturation. At the same time 20 different vintages are aged here, my great-great-grandfather wanted to make 2 million bottles, but we never crossed the threshold of half a million, the standard volume is 300-400 thousand bottles per year, if we try, we can make 450, but this is rare. High humidity regulates the evaporation of alcohol, besides we need a constant temperature, we don’t filter the wine, we rack, the wine doesn’t get too much oxygen, which is what well-made, tight barrels and high humidity are all about.
Technically, here in the cellar, almost nothing has changed since those times. Most of the change took place upstairs, in the vineyards. Today, when people visit wineries, they are already accustomed to their technological appearance.
Many people, however, like our style: wines that don’t come out young, wines that are allowed to age gracefully.
This is not to say that young wines are worse than old wines, because to make a good old wine you need a great young wine. We have never released young wines because we do not have the technology to stabilize them. We decided not to invest in this. Here we have barrels made of American oak and at the very beginning even them were not here: barrels were made from chestnut and cherry, any wood that fit and could bend and hold its shape. Then the industry discovered that oak is very good for wine, my great-great-grandfather began to import barrels from the USA. For us a barrel is a container in which the wine comes to the desired state.
We split the oak that comes here by ourselves and dry it ourselves for several years (1,5 years in the open air, under the wind, sun and rain). We repair our barrels ourselves. Gran Reserva we maintain 10 years, Reservas – maximum, 6, Gravonia – 4. Unlike me, my sister knows all the barrels here. She’s here every day.”