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The Story of CUNE’s Vina Real

Spain: CVNE's Viña Real 1933-2004 (and One Surprise)

Wine Advocate : April 30, 2015

I became part of The Wine Advocate team in April 2013. Believe it or not, it takes time to move from a comfortable office job in a large multinational to tasting wines all day. My first few months were quite stressful, especially since I had to learn everything about the wines from Argentina and Chile. It must have been September or October when our team of reviewers received an email from our editor asking us to produce our "Best of the Year" list. Holy moly! I had only published a handful of shortish articles and I already had to name my best of the year? Yep, that was it, and so I did. However, one of the categories was kind of tricky: "Vertical/Retrospective Tasting of the Year." Well, I hadn't had time to do any! Now, hold it! Oh yes, I did! I did a great vertical of CVNE's Viña Real, one of the most consistent historical reds from Rioja! It had been just before joining The Wine Advocate, but it was within that year! So I thought I could get away with it and declared that tasting my "vertical tasting of the year 2013.?

Yeah, I thought I could get away with it. Of course, it was only a matter of time until one of

our subscribers asked, "I cannot find the Viña Real vertical anywhere, where can I find it?? Unfortunately, I had to explain that I didn't write up that magnificent tasting, as it had taken place just before joining and therefore the information about it was nowhere to be found in our database or article archive. But I promised one day I'd do another one and would write it all up. And that day (a little later than expected) is today!

Excuses, excuses...

One thing that has delayed this article is that I didn't want to start writing about - and even less mixing - old, historical wines with new releases. After all, my two predecessors had already reviewed a number of classical wines from Spain - mainly Rioja - in their articles as they were shown the wines when visiting the regions. So a.) I didn't want to repeat the same wines again and b.) I didn't want the scores/articles for old wines mixed up with new releases. There were many regions to cover and I wanted to go around them all at least once before considering a tasting like this. So I had to shamefully admit in my "Best of 2014? that I had not yet done any great vertical tastings, as I was catching up with what was happening in Spain, Argentina and Chile. I could do nothing better than promise that Viña Real was coming. So I definitely had to do it before producing my list of "Best of 2015"!

I will slowly start tasting and writing about older, historical wines, but I will not mix them with the current ones except in "bits & pieces? articles. There were a couple of notes on old Scala Dei from Priorat in the previous issue, and they'd make separate articles of their own. I want to do some Castillo de Ygay Gran Reserva Blanco (as it will come back onto the market in 2016 with the wine from 1986), and a retrospective of 1994 and 1995 that are two very famous vintages for Ribera del Duero. Also,for Rioja in Spain I want to do a

vertical of Vega Sicilia's Reserva Especial, 1947 Rioja vs. Bordeaux... Hold it, hold it! I'm not promising anything, but these are ideas going around in my head.

On Rioja and CVNE & How We Got to this Tasting

Hand bottling during the 1970s. Notice the barrels of Imperial Gran Reserva 1970 behind the man. So where were we? Oh, yes, Viña Real! Through years of drinking old Rioja I came to the conclusion that the most regular and reliable wines were those from CVNE. Basically, any old vintage of Viña Real or Imperial (not to mention the white Monopole) I come across I buy. I'm referring to old vintages, to wines up to 1973, mainly from the 1940s, 1950s, and 1960s. After that was the explosion of new plantings generated by the success of the 1970 vintage when all these new vineyards came into production. I consider the 1973 the last truly great, classic Rioja vintage. That does not mean there are no great wines or vintages after that, to the contrary, but during all those pre-1974 years there were no "bad" vineyards. That is to say the vineyards were only planted where they belonged, on poorer soils, in the places where nothing else would grow and usually with a massale selection rather than highly productive clones. After 1970 the surface under vine exploded and soils previously planted with potatoes and beetroot were replanted with Tempranillo clones on trellises. Once that was permitted they added drip irrigation to the disaster. Rioja became a vinous minefield after 1974. I will elaborate a little more on this later.

Viña Real Gran Reserva 1959, the best bottle in the tasting.

In the old times some CVNE wines were better than others. I had noticed that the Gran Reserva, or Reserva Especial bottling from CVNE were often among my favorites. CVNE made some very popular wines in Spain and their presence in the local market was strong. As with many of the most popular wine brands (think Pesquera, Imperial or

whatever) there were many different wines sold at very different price points, from the unoaked joven, lately the awfully named roble or semi-crianza, then Crianza, Reserva and Gran Reserva. So many of CVNE's wines were very popular, even supermarket wines in their Crianza category. This gave the impression that all of the Imperial and Viña Real wines were just good value for the money but not great wines, even though they were in their top category the Gran Reserva and sometimes labeled in their best years Reserva Especial. The record has to be set straight; people ought to know about these great historical wines!

That's how I came to do some extensive tastings and articles on Viña Real, Imperial and even their white wines. Although, they do not have many vintages of their Monopole. Monopole is a very interesting white that used to be topped up with 5% Manzanilla from Sanlúcar de Barrameda and that they used to purchase form Emilio Hidalgo. I tasted and wrote articles for elmundovino.com and also did some Viña Real vertical tastings for groups of friends in Barcelona and in Madrid. This last one in Madrid was the source for my "Best of 2013.? It is the tasting that got me into trouble and led to this article. A rather convoluted way to get here, but here we are.

They would go unnoticed at a hipster farmer's market today, brothers Eusebio and Raimundo Real de Asúa, great

grandparents of current CVNE's CEO Víctor Urrútia. So I convinced CVNE's CEO Víctor Urrutia to do one more, to do "the mother of all Viña Real tastings" to uncork all the vintages they could find in their cellars and write it all up for The Wine Advocate. As they were willing to pull the corks on so many historical bottles, and I didn't want to waste the wine if only I tasted from those bottles, I invited a limited group of friends from different parts of the world to taste most of the vintages produced between 1933 and 2004. We tasted together but I kept my own notes, for subscriber eyes only. Neither I nor the winery had uncorked so many vintages of the wine in a single

tasting. We had a total of 36 vintages, the largest Viña Real tasting ever! But let's go back to the beginning.

CVNE is the acronym for Compañía de Vinos del Norte de España, Northern Spain's Wine Company (NSWC? Nah! Let's stick to CVNE). The winery was created in 1879 by the Real de Asúa brothers in Haro, the heart of Rioja, and is still run by their family today. For the sake of pronunciation, the name of the winery was corrupted along the way to CUNE (say coonay!), which is how everybody pronounces it. In fact it became so popular that they registered it as a brand, too. But for a long time their top brands have been the white Monopole (they once owned the name Lanceros, but it was sold to some Portuguese guys who continued it under Lancers) and the reds Imperial and Viña Real.

Last decade of the 19th century at the Barrio de la Estación in Haro: workers dressed in starched shirts and sporting

bowler hats. Imperial is the classical Rioja Alta, the archetype of red from Haro. It is strict and serious, sold in a Bordeaux bottle and made with some Graciano (and always the white Viura) to complement the base of Tempranillo. Viña Real is the more voluptuous and showy blend from Rioja Alavesa, Tempranillo and Mazuelo. Although in the past it contained quite a bit of Garnacha, one has to suspect some of those grapes must have been sourced from

Rioja Baja. Again, like all historical reds in Rioja, Viña Real always included a significant amount of white Viura grapes in its blend as it added freshness and acidity. If Imperial was their "fine" red, then Viña Real was the meatier, rounder and more "powerful" bottling presented in a Burgundy bottle. Obviously, the understanding of fine and powerful was quite different back then (probably guided by alcohol levels), as today we'd use the descriptors the other way around; fine for Viña Real and powerful for Imperial.

The Story of Viña Real

Old brands and old labels. The predecessor of Viña Real, Castillo San Mateo at the bottom right, with the label Tipo

Borgoña. The origin of Viña Real can be traced to a wine they used to produce called Castillo de San Mateo (Saint Matthew's Castle) before the Spanish Civil War (1936-1939). It evolved with time as they found some vineyards and a partner in the vicinity of the village of

Elciego, where there was a road called Camino Real (the Royal Way). At first they contemplated different names; Viña del Camino Real and Viña Real de Asúa (including the family name, a brand that was rescued many years later as a homage to the founders). They finally settled with Viña Real, which was registered in the general brands registry on August 3, 1940.

Viña Real was bottled as early as the 1920s

The wine was produced before - I tasted 1933, 1934 and 1938 for this article, and I've encountered bottles from the 1920s in the past - but at that time brands were not taken as seriously as they are now, and they might have used different names throughout the years. In 1943, they created a separate society, Bodegas José Murúa S.A. based in

Elciego, a joint venture with the grape grower of that name to produce the Viña Real wines. Before this the wines were fermented in the main winery in Haro and from the mid-1940s Viña Real was produced at Elciego. The name of the company was eventually changed to Viña Real S.A., and that's how you'll find the current vintages in our database. It was an independent, separate company early on, even though it now belongs 100% to CVNE and everybody associates both names.

The winery at Elciego had cement vats where the wines were fermented until the end of the century. As the Elciego facilities were getting too small, part of the grapes were fermented in stainless steel in Haro and the wine was then blended with what still fermented in cement at Elciego. That continued for a few years until 2004 when the Viña Real wines, including the 2004 Gran Reserva (the youngest vintage included here), was fully fermented in a brand the new Viña Real winery. There they only have stainless steel, something I don't quite agree with, but they never asked me. The new winery is an impressive building designed by Bordeaux architect Philippe Mazières at the top of the Cerro de la Mesa hill, above Contino. CVNE used to own 50% of Contino, where they had some other investors since the beginning, again a joint venture with a local family there. But they have recently purchased most of the shares and they now own 95% of Contino. So, look for CVNE-related wines under CVNE, Viña Real and Contino...

Crianza, Reserva, Gran Reserva... & Reserva Especial

The categories Crianza, Reserva and Gran Reserva are now clearly defined by Rioja's rules. But that was not the case in the early years. The appellation was formalized back in 1925, but these categories were created much later. CVNE offers Viña Real in three categories, which might be a little confusing but you have to think of three wines; Viña

Real Crianza, Viña Real Reserva and Viña Real Gran Reserva. Again, that's today, but it was not always the case. The use of the Reserva or Gran Reserva monikers was quite loose. In 1974 they created a category for oak-aged wines, vino de crianza, that you might see on some back labels but the Crianza, Reserva and Gran Reserva categories were not officially created until 1980. Even the vintages prior to 1970 have to be taken with a pinch of salt. The vintages have also only been certified since 1980.

In fact in the past there was Viña Real Cuarto Año, a non-vintage (possibly blended) wine released in its fourth year, which could loosely correspond to today's Crianza and a vintage reserva wine. When they thought they had a really special wine it was labeled accordingly, as Reserva Especial, as is the case with the 1964, 1962, 1954, 1949, 1946, 1941 and 1938. However, with so much relabeling going on through the years they had to adapt to the new rules and there might have been other Reserva Especial vintages. Mannie Berk from The Rare Wine Company in California is one of the most knowledgeable persons about CVNE (and Madeira and many other things!) in the world. He explained how he has seen other vintages wearing the Reserva Especial label. But this information is now almost lost and unlabeled bottles are always somewhat uncertain. We did have a few wines thought to be simply Reserva.

The tasting was a nice walk through Rioja's 20th century, with some ups and downs, an unusual and unfortunate number of corked bottles and some wines that were past their best. Quite unlucky, as CVNE's classical wines from the 1920s through the early 1970s are, in my experience, Rioja's most reliable and consistent.

We tasted in flights of six wines, always going from younger to older. For individual descriptions and comments on each wine - including historical context my way; I often

offered musical references that you may have to look up. As for general impressions,the wines quite faithfully follow the evolution of Rioja in the 20th century, the golden years since the creation of the appellation until the boom of the 1970s when the truly classical wines were produced. Then came the increase of land under vine and the yields through the 1970s and 1980s and the general decline in quality. Another inexplicable phenomenon after 1970 is the increase of Tempranillo in the vineyards (now around 80%), to the point when it was FORBIDDEN to even plant white grapes.

Harvesting with donkeys and carts was commonplace until relatively recently.

The high-level cycles were getting shorter and shorter. My personal breakdown, which is not scientific and varies from winery to winery, is as follows. Of course, not all wineries follow the same path; some might still be in the ancestral times:

• The Ancestral Times: Middle Ages until the mid-1800s, just before phylloxera • The French Period: 1850s until the 1920s • The Golden Years: 1925 to 1973, when the great classical Riojas were produced • The Industrial Revolution: mid-1970s to early 1990s • Born Again Rioja, the Wake Up: 1994 until the late 1990s • The Excess Years: late 1990s until mid-2000s; 2001 was a year of many excesses • Back to the Future: 2005 or so, until today; modernity and tradition converge

The rebirth of 1994 was soon taken to extremes, sometimes going over the limit in ripeness, extraction and use of new French oak. This period extended from the end of the 1990s until around 2004-2005 where we finish the tasting. Those early years of the new century saw the return to more balanced and somewhat classical wines, the modernists creating more classical wines and the classical wineries (or at least some of them) producing their best wines for decades.

So, around 2004 there was no demand whatsoever, at least in Spain, for classical Gran Reserva and the quantities of Viña Real Gran Reserva were quite small. They fermented perhaps 15,000 liters and basically all the wine was exported. That situation is slowly changing and they now sell small quantities of Gran Reserva in Spain again and the quality (and profile) of the bottlings is also going back to what they were before. The wines from the Golden Years (1925-1973) showed well in general. At the end of that period the varietal breakdown was approximately 40% Tempranillo, 40% Garnacha and 20% other varieties, mainly Viura, Mazuelo and Graciano, in that order. The older vintages showed some wines that were already too tired, but with some surprises, such as the superb 1938 feeling much fresher and younger than some wines 20 years younger.

Four of a kind!

One relevant change is the shortening of the time the wines spent in oak. In the past they were never bottled prior to 10 years after the harvest, something completely unthinkable since wineries have financial directors! That time has gradually been reduced, the 1933 was bottled in 1945, and the 1938 in 1949, and the 1941 was not bottled until October

1957; a full 16 years after the harvest! That practice guaranteed that the wines were completely stable once bottled. They had slowly oxidized in the barrels, which might be one of the reasons for the longevity of these wines. Now the Gran Reserva is matured in oak barrels for about two years in mainly French oak with a significant number of barrels replaced each year. In the past, the barrels were American oak and never new.

Reductive winemaking might be overrated: racking at CVNE in the 1970s

But more likely than not, the main difference between the wines of yesteryear and the wines of today is the changes in viticulture and the vineyards. To make a long story short, in the past there were only vineyards where nothing else would grow, in other words in the poorer soils. There were no clones or trellises and yields were much lower. No potassium

or other chemicals were used to poison the soils. But that, as Kipling would say, is definitively another story.

The Icing on the Cake: Spain's Liquid History

Going back to the tasting, which, as I explained, I had previously done three other times (but never this extensive), has always been closed with one unique and spectacular wine that CVNE has only managed to produce in ONE vintage since its existence. I had not thought about including it here and we only had it as part of a dinner after the tasting and not at the tasting proper. But after sharing a magnificent bottle of it with The Wine Advocate team at a dinner in London during the Grand World Tour and Matter of Taste events, I suddenly realized: this was my chance to publish a tasting note on that wine.

A historical, unique wine, the semi-sweet white 1939 Corona.

I'm talking about a semi-sweet white wine called 1939 Corona Semi Dulce. Yes, they might have released small quantities of other off-dry whites under the name Corona (the reason why the Mexican beer Corona is called Coronita in Spain) trying to replicate this unique wine, fruit of exceptional circumstances, which they will never manage again. This

wine was produced the year the Spanish Civil War ended when the whole of Spain must have been complete chaos, including Rioja. Somehow the grapes were harvested extremely late and they had developed some noble rot, something very unusual given Rioja's climate. They fermented the grapes, put the wine in barrels and proceeded to forget about it until 1970 when it was "found" and bottled. But the bottles were also "forgotten" for close to 40 years. They have never really sold the wine other than individual bottles here and there, but they show it at exceptional tastings. So, given that you need a civil war and 70 years of patience and forgiveness, they have not yet managed to produce anything like that again! I urge you to read the tasting note, where I tell the whole story of this stunning 100-pointer!

—Luis Gutiérrez

1939 Cvne Corona Semi

Dulce 100 Early

2004 Cvne Vina Real Gran Reserva

93 Early


91? Early 30-65


89 Early


94 Early


? 79


94 Early


93 Early


90 Early


94 Early


90 Early


?


93 Early 281


88 Mature


?


? 149


93 Early


94 Early


94+ Early 313


96 Early


100 Early


93 Early


?


?


?


96 Early


?

1951 Cvne Vina Real Reserva 90 Early 1950 Cvne Vina Real Reserva 90 Early 1947 Cvne Vina Real Reserva 99 Early 1964 Cvne Vina Real Reserva

Especial 95 Early 158

1962 Cvne Vina Real Reserva Especial

97 Early


98 Early


92 Early


?


93 Early


98 Early

the story of cune’s vina real - chamberswines.com€¦ · the story of cune’s vina real ......

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