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How Rioja got its
name, or...
'That which we call a rose..'
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by John
Radford
JR's notes: In November
1998 Julian Jeffs, the series editor for the range of wine books published by
Faber and Faber hinted that he might like to publish a book on Rioja and asked
for a sample chapter. This was what I sent him. He replied in slightly shocked
tones that it read more like the scenario for a film-script than a chapter in a
serious wine book. More than two years were to pass before I got round to
submitting a new chapter for his inspection - in January 2001 - and this
time... Well, we shall see. But I still like the original :-) |
Imagine... It's a thousand years ago,
you've been walking for sixteen hours and your feet are killing you. Your whole
body aches with hunger and fatigue and, as you stumble, almost automatically
now, in the gathering gloom of the night, you take a sip of the bitter,
brackish water which is all you have left in the bottom of your gourd. You lean
heavily on your staff, wondering if you'll find shelter before darkness falls
completely and the wolves come out of the forest, in their own search for
sustenance...
...And then you see a light, and hear the distant tolling
of a monastery bell. With each faltering step it becomes louder and the light
becomes brighter. You catch the faintest sound of monastic voices united in
plainsong and, though exhausted, your pace quickens, your heartbeat revives...
Can that possibly be the smell of cooking, borne on the chilly night breeze?
The track is a little smoother here, with flat stones laid side-by-side to
assist the passage of oxcarts and donkeys... And then you see it: the monastery
of Santo Domingo de la Calzada with its welcoming light and warming, open door.
The monks relieve you of your pitiful burden and seat you at the refectory
table, give you bread, soup and wine, a bed and the safety and warmth of the
monastery until morning, when your pilgrimage will continue...
...And
though the bread be coarse and dry, the soup of pulses and vegetables from the
gardens of the monastery and the wine made last autumn from grapes picked
locally, trodden in the monastery's stone troughs and stored in wineskins, yet
the sounds and senses, tastes and smells and enjoyment of that meal mean more
than supper with the King of Navarra. The food is better than the plumpest
roast partridge and the wine as fine a vintage as ever graced the royal
table... And the bed, a mattress stuffed with straw on a wooden trestle, is
softer than a maiden's bosom...
And, when you've reached the end of
your pilgrimage, at the cathedral in Santiago de Compostela, and you want to
write to the monks of Santo Domingo to thank them for their hospitality what
instructions do you give to the returning pilgrim who will deliver the letter
for you? 'To the brothers of the monastery of Santo Domingo de la Calzada, at
the point where the Camino de Santiago crosses the Río Oja'...
There are still pilgrims walking the route today, although the former
monastery is now a splendidly-restored Parador, and the river Oja still runs
through what is now the small town (population 5,000) of Santo Domingo de la
Calzada. Millions of pilgrims must have passed this way since the shrine of St
James was established at Santiago de Compostela and then, as now, the journey
entitles the pilgrim to free food and lodging at every monastery along the way.
A thousand years ago, many would have had cause to bless the brothers of Santo
Domingo for their modest supper and, perhaps, the monastery's position by the
bridge over the river Oja provided La Rioja's first address... And its name, of
course. You can imagine returned pilgrims asking for 'the wine from the
Río Oja?'
This would certainly explain why a wineland which is
heavily dominated by the river Ebro and served by half a dozen main tributaries
should take its name from what is little more than a winding stream which joins
the river Tirón - itself little more than a brook - before the
Tirón becomes a tributary of the Ebro at Haro. However, when the new
constitution of Spain came into being after the death of Franco and the country
was divided into autonomous communities, the wine, and the region, were
sufficiently well known to give their name to the whole of what had been the
province of Logroño, independent from Castilla-León to the west
and Navarra to the north and east.
Whatever its name, Rioja has done
rather well for itself in the second millennium. Spain's best-known wine (apart
from Sherry) has been dominant throughout the country's vinous history, one of
the basic commodities of trade throughout the country and the Mediterranean
from ancient history up to mediæval times. It was boosted as the forces
of Castile won back the northern winelands from the Moorish invaders and the
conquering kings restored wine to its rightful place in gastronomy. It was
bolstered by the sixteenth-century expansion of the Spanish Empire in the
Americas and advanced again by the 'método industrial' introduced by the
Marqués de Riscal and his fellow-pioneers in the 1850s and 1860s. It was
the great survivor of the bleak years of the mid-20th century when almost all
other Spanish wine was tarred with the brush of diluted, locally-bottled
'plonk' masquerading pathetically as 'Spanish Burgundy' and 'Spanish
Sauternes'. It was the great flagship of Sp ain's fightback as a serious
wine-producing country from the 1970s onward and became a 'find' for the
aspiring middle classes in the boom-and-bust 1980s. Some of us there are who
have known and loved it all our drinking lives. Others have only discovered it
since so many new 'boutique' wineries have sprung up to capitalise on the
magnificent natural resources presented by the Tempranillo grape, the iron-clay
and chalk soils and the heady river-valley climate. Many will discover it
tomorrow - perhaps, even, as a result of reading this book...
...And,
as the third millennium opens for business, the bodegas are producing a wider
range of better wines than at any time in Rioja's history. This is their story.
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