Haro Train Station District: The Bordeaux-Rioja Connection
Bordeaux and Rioja are each major wine regions in their own right, but it wasn’t until I visited Rioja earlier this year that I appreciated how intertwined these regions are from historical and winemaking perspectives.
Back on February 17, 2022, we left our Airbnb in San Sebastian for a 2-hour drive to the town of Haro in the Rioja wine region for our 10:00 AM private tour of Viña Tondonia.
Visits to Viña Tondonia are now restricted to wine professionals only and no longer available to the public, and as I am someone with the dubious credentials of a “wine student”, there was no way I was going to be late for this appointment. We arrived early with 45 minutes to kill, so we set off to explore the quiet town of Haro.
As we passed by the bodegas of La Rioja Alta S.A., Compañia Vinícola del Norte de España – CVNE, Bodegas Gómez Cruzado and Bodegas Muga, all shoulder-to-shoulder with one another, I was awestruck by how many major historic producers were so densely packed around each other by the Haro Train Station.
As it turns out, Haro Train Station District currently has the largest concentration of wineries that are over 100 years old in the world.
Spain has been producing wine since approximately 1,000 BCE, but Rioja did not become a prominent wine region until much later in the 19th century due to two major factors: (1) phylloxera and (2) the railroads.
In the mid-1860s when the devastating louse, phylloxera, was raging across France and destroying the French vineyards, the Bordelaise started crossing the border to Spain, where phylloxera was not yet an issue, to buy significant amounts of Spanish wine and, at the same time, brought French winemaking knowledge with them. At around the same time, the Tudela-Bilbao railway was built, and it crossed through the town of Haro and became a major transportation vehicle for wine imports connecting France and Spain.
The Barrio de la Estación, which surrounded the railway station, was initially made up of mostly warehouses to store goods to be transported on the trains, but in 1877, Don Rafael López de Heredia y Landeta established the first winery in the Barrio, the renowned Bodegas R. López de Heredia.
Born in Chile, the enterprising Don Rafael had learned winemaking in France and was a fervent believer of the potential of Rioja Alta, the sub-region of Rioja surrounding Haro, to become a major wine region, and he looked to Bordeaux for inspiration.
He even attempted to make sweet wines in the Viña Zaconia vineyard using noble rot (botrytis cinerea) which he called “Sauternia” that were modeled after the famed wines of Sauternes in the Graves sub-region of Bordeaux. The sweet wine venture was ultimately unsuccessful and the vineyards were converted to grapes for dry white wines, but the dry white wines from this vineyard are now called Viña Gravonia, a play on the name “Graves”, and are among the most sought after and ageable white wines.
Don Rafael applied winemaking techniques he learned in France to his wines, and now, the wines of R. López de Heredia are arguably some of the most admired wines of Spain and the rest of the wine world. The significance of the Haro train station to this bodega as a means to connect the two fine wine regions continues to live on today, as featured prominently on the front labels of the R. López de Heredia wines.
So, let’s do a quick compare/contrast to get to know these regions.
Similarities - A River Runs Through It:
Both regions are concentrated around major rivers. In Bordeaux, the Gironde Estuary connects the Garonne River and the Dordogne River to the Atlantic Ocean, and many of the best vineyards are clustered around the rivers. The location of the châteaux in Bordeaux relative to the rivers informs the appellation of the wine.
In Rioja, the Ebro River runs through or adjacent to the three sub-regions of Rioja Alta, Rioja Alavesa and Rioja Oriental, and the Ebro River forms a natural boundary between portions of the Rioja Alta and the Rioja Alavesa sub-regions.
Differences with Some Similarities - Vine Training:
In Bordeaux, the most common system of vine training is the Guyot system, which is what most people typically think of when they think of vineyards - in plain English, where one or two arms of one-year old wood are attached to wires and the shoots are held up by wires and the vines are set up in rows.
In Rioja, the traditional method of vine training is the bush vine, which is exactly what it sounds like - a vine that looks like a stubby bush without wires holding up the shoots. However, because trellising vines with wires makes mechanization much easier, trellised vines with vertical shoot positioning are now becoming much more common in Rioja.
Similarities with Some Differences - Maturation in Oak:
Maturation of wine in 225 liter oak barriques is a major component of winemaking in both regions.
In Rioja, while there are some producers who have decided not to use ageing categories for their wines, wines labeled with Crianza, Reserva or Gran Reserva have specified minimum ageing periods in oak, and the 225 liter size of the barrique is mandated by law, although producers are free to use French oak or American oak. These are only minimum ageing requirements, and Viña Tondonia Gran Reserva wines, the top wines of Bodegas R. López de Heredia, are routinely aged in barrel for 10 years.
In Bordeaux, the top red wines are typically aged for 18-24 months in 225 liter French oak barriques, and many top quality white wines and sweet wines are also matured for extended periods of time in oak.
Differences with Some Similarities - The Varieties:
In Bordeaux, the major black grape varieties are Cabernet Sauvignon, Merlot, Cabernet Franc, Petit Verdot and Malbec, and the major white grape varieties are Sauvignon Blanc, Semillon and Muscadelle.
In Rioja, the major black grape varieties are Tempranillo, Garnacha, Graciano, Mazuelo and Maturana Tinta (Trousseau), and the major white grape varieties are Viura (Macabeo, Macabeu), Tempranillo Blanco, Malvasía, Garnacha Blanca and Verdejo.
Cabernet Sauvignon is a permitted variety in Rioja but not widely used, and Sauvignon Blanc is used in Rioja as a single varietal and as a blending component.
Differences - The Classification Systems:
Like other major Old World wine regions, both regions have classification systems that theoretically represent tiers of quality.
In Bordeaux, the 1855 Classification, arguably the most well-known of the Bordeaux classification systems, sorted, according to the price of the wines at that time, the top 61 (increased from the initial 58) châteaux in the Médoc and one château in Graves (Haut-Brion) into 5 tiers (“Growths”) and 26 châteaux in the sweet wine region of Sauternes. Other classification systems in Bordeaux include the Graves classification (16 châteaux without any tiering), the Saint-Émilion classification (in 2012, there were 82 châteaux sorted into 3 tiered categories) and the Crus Bourgeois du Médoc classification given to certain wines and not châteaux. As evident from above, the classification systems vary by which sub-region the châteaux are located in, and the wines are ranked by the identity of the châteaux, not the location of the vineyard and the source of the grapes, as is the case in Burgundy.
In contrast, in Rioja, there are now two types of classification systems: (1) the traditional classification determined by how long the wines were matured for prior to release by the producer (Crianza, Reserva and Gran Reserva in ascending order) with minimum periods of time in the barrel and/or bottle and (2) the more recent classification system that was published in 2018 based on the source of the grapes. The latter classification system is determined not only by the location of the vineyards (Vino de Zona, Vino de Municipio and Viñedo Singular in ascending order) but also by compliance with varying levels of strict grapegrowing and winemaking requirements.
A magical day at Viña Tondonia!
Want to learn more? Here are some fantastic resources I used for this blog post:
https://www.foodswinesfromspain.com/spanishfoodwine/global/wine/features/feature-detail/haro-rioja-station-district.html
https://www.lopezdeheredia.com/noticias/View.pdf
https://quentinsadler.wordpress.com/tag/lopez-de-heredia/
https://cristinaalcala.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/10/WineSpritis-Roundtrip-Haro.pdf
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