Wine Advocate – Luis Gutierrez
Spain: CVNE's Viña Real 1933-2004 (and One Surprise)
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
19
39
Cvne Corona Semi
Dulce
100
Earl
y
20
04
Cvne Vina Real Gran
Reserva
93
Early
20
01
Cvne Vina Real Gran
Reserva
91?
Early
19
99
Cvne Vina Real Gran
Reserva
89
Early
19
95
Cvne Vina Real Gran
Reserva
94
Early
19
94
Cvne Vina Real Gran
Reserva
?
19
91
Cvne Vina Real Gran
Reserva
94
Early
19
90
Cvne Vina Real Gran
Reserva
93
Early
19
88
Cvne Vina Real Gran
Reserva
90
Early
19
87
Cvne Vina Real Gran
Reserva
94
Early
19
85
Cvne Vina Real Gran
Reserva
90
Early
19
82
Cvne Vina Real Gran
Reserva
?
19
81
Cvne Vina Real Gran
Reserva
93
Early
19
78
Cvne Vina Real Gran
Reserva
88
Matur
e
19
76
Cvne Vina Real Gran
Reserva
?
19
75
Cvne Vina Real Gran
Reserva
?
19
73
Cvne Vina Real Gran
Reserva
93
Early
19
70
Cvne Vina Real Gran
Reserva
94
Early
19
68
Cvne Vina Real Gran
Reserva
94+
Early
19
66
Cvne Vina Real Gran
Reserva
96
Early
19
59
Cvne Vina Real Gran
Reserva
100
Early
19
52
Cvne Vina Real Gran
Reserva
93
Early
19
45
Cvne Vina Real Gran
Reserva
?
19
44
Cvne Vina Real Gran
Reserva
?
19
42
Cvne Vina Real Gran
Reserva
?
19
34
Cvne Vina Real Gran
Reserva
96
3065
79
281
149
Early
313
19
33
Cvne Vina Real Gran
Reserva
?
19
51
Cvne Vina Real Reserva
90
Early
19
50
Cvne Vina Real Reserva
90
Early
19
47
Cvne Vina Real Reserva
99
Early
19
64
Cvne Vina Real Reserva
Especial
95
Early
19
62
Cvne Vina Real Reserva
Especial
97
Early
19
54
Cvne Vina Real Reserva
Especial
98
Early
19
49
Cvne Vina Real Reserva
Especial
92
Early
19
46
Cvne Vina Real Reserva
Especial
?
19
41
Cvne Vina Real Reserva
Especial
93
Early
19
38
Cvne Vina Real Reserva
Especial
98
Early
158