Sunday drinking: 19 March
This week I’m looking at a Rioja bodega that can open doors and melt hearts
Though this Substack is primarily meant to be about history and culture, and how they relate to alcohol, I do get to try a lot of interesting booze so every Sunday I’m going to write about one or two things I have been drinking that week. I appreciate that there’s a lot of people recommending bottles out there so if nobody reads these, then I’ll quietly drop it. We’ll pretend it never happened and I’ll go back to writing about what Wellington drank before the siege of Badajoz.
This week I had a bottle of Viña Cubillo 2013. An author who I used to publish on the Master of Malt blog Ian Buxton bought me a case to say thank you and so long because the blog is no longer taking freelance contributions. Ian has been a great friend and mentor to me over the years and it should really be me buying him the wine. It’s from a Rioja bodega called Lopez de Heredia - to call it a cult winery would be something of an understatement. Their most famous wine Viña Todonia, can open doors and melt hearts.
I remember going to a famous suckling pig restaurant in Barcelona and as a young Englishman with limited means was being treated with some classic Catalan hauteur by the waiter. That is until I ordered a bottle of Tondonia and his whole demeanour changed. Suddenly he was confident, a fellow conspirator. He admitted it was his favourite wine and when he opened the bottle had a little glass with us at the table. After that he could not have been more solicitous.
Lopez de Heredia is run by two sisters Maria José and Mercedes López de Heredia who make Rioja much as it would have been made in the early 20th century. This means long casks aging in old barrels. Nothing is sold until it's ready to drink. For such a good wine, Tondonia isn’t even that expensive, around £40 bottle retail. Cubillo is half the price (The Wine Society has the 2014 for £18, the 2013 is pretty easy to find internationally) and it’s also a little more conventional than its big brother. Tondonia needs time to open up whereas Cubillo tastes superb right out of the bottle
It’s a blend of the usual grapes of the region tempranillo, garnacha, graciano and mazuelo (carignan). If you like the cooked fruit and tobacco flavour of trad Rioja then you will love this. Like many wine lovers, I cut my teeth on Rioja and have never lost that love - it’s the combination of history, class and moderate prices. Once you’ve picked up a taste for Lopez de Heredia’s reds, then you might be ready for their whites which taste like a cross between sherry and white Burgundy. I adore them but they are pretty unusual.
I’ll be writing more on the subject of Rioja but I’ve got another four bottles of Cubillo left and they are calling to me from the cellar. There’s nothing better with roast pork.
The best thing about working for (old version) Fields, Morris & Verdin was being agents for Lopez de Heredia