Roda ‘I’ Blue Note Tempranillo Riserva Imperial 6L 2015

Why is this Wine so Yummy?

“It is a wine with more structure, with deeper sensations of black fruits, greater wealth of minerals and more complexity. It is a wine for quietness and meditation with a style marked by black cherry.”

Agustin Santolaya

Roda 1 is handled identically to Roda, but the blue-note fruit has a heightened minerality with fine but determined structure resulting from great tannin maturity. The differences between Roda and Roda 1 are simply the product of fruit selection, not winemaking. It’s a wine of power with enormous finesse.

The 2015 Roda 1 ‘Blue Note’

Autumn and Winter with lot of rain so the cycle began with enough water on the ground. Very cold winter. Spring fresh at its start but it changed in May, which was really warm and made the phenology process progress (flowering 1st June).  During May it did not rain at all, due to the winter reserves of water, it did not matter. It rained in June after the curd. July was extremely hot with highs of 35ºC-37ºC and storms that left good rainfall.
Soft August, with cooler temperatures than usual. Very early harvest, mid-September, finishing the 8th October. A year of perfect maturation, with Mediterranean influence and great wines.

Grape varieties – 2015: 97% Tempranillo, 3% Graciano

Vineyard: Bush vines over 30 years old, yields limited to 1,5 kgs per vine

Fermentation: In French oak vats, with controlled temperature.

Ageing: In 50% brand new and 50% second use, French oak barrels. 16 months in barrels and 20 months cellaring in bottle.

Bottling: July 2017

Stabilization: Completely natural methods, clarification using only egg whites

About Bodegas Roda

Roda, based in Rioja, was one of the first producers to spark my interest in Spanish reds particularly with their Tempranillo’s. At the time, back in the early 2000’s, Spanish wine was seeing the same kind of change we’ve seen happen in many old world wine regions. At one end of the spectrum, wines handled in an extremely oxidative manner, stored in oak under the rules for the D.O. for long periods of time, often resulting in oxidised volatile wines. On the other, heavy hand use of oak, clinical, technical wine making that was turning great fruit into boring cumbersome wines.

Roda II, now named simply Roda, and Roda I, were two wines that managed to find the balance between old school and new school, making wines of great balance and personality. Their top wine Cirsion aims to push even further, exploring precision viticulture to ensure only the best plots, with the finest of tannins end up in the bottle.

Although a young winery, celebrating it’s 25th anniversary in 2012, Roda has access to an incredible selection of old vines, yielding exceptional fruit. It shows in their wines.

Engaging aromas. The predominant aromas come from the vineyard: red berry fruit or black fruit but they are always present. Oak, in the background, almost imperceptible. Sweet spices and mineral notes, bringing complexity. Balsamic touches, giving freshness. The palate is where their great class shows through. Full, ample, with definition. Savoury, fresh fruit flavour, long. With sweet, softly integrated tannins.

A sensation of volume and freshness. Wines that incite you to have another sip. Absolute respect for the vintage: down to the last drop of wine in each bottle, the vintage is exactly what is indicated on the label. Roda is committed to offering the best possible wine that the climatic vintage has been capable of creating in our vineyards. The complex system of different vineyard plots enables us to offer excellent wines every time. Wines that give pleasure, wines that transmit sensations.

From Bodegas Roda

Ro-Da is the contraction of the surnames of the two founders, Mario Rottlant and Carmen Daurella. (Note that their wonderful extra virgin olive oil, Dauro, uses their surnames’ starting letters in reverse.) Since 1987, they have sought to establish a unique expression of Rioja, based on 17 different vineyards of old vines in poor soils (a mixture of sandstone and clay/limestone) all with long histories in quality Rioja wine growing. Roda’s main vineyards are in the Estacion district near Haro. For the first years, no wines meeting their intentions were achieved, but Roda has successfully released wines since 1992, starting with Roda 1 and Roda (aka Roda 2, 1992-2001), which have been produced each year since, save 1993 when only Roda 2 was produced. In 1998, these were joined by the deluxe ‘Cirsion’ and since 2008, a young vines wine, ‘Sela’.

About Tempranillo

All of the wines on offer are dominantly or 100% Tempranillo with a splash of Graciano or Garnacha (Grenache) thrown in here and there.

It tends to offer rich, succulent fruit with soft supple tannins. It a variety where getting élévage right is critical, too little ageing pre-bottling resulting in raw often reduced wines.

No such problem for Roda or Telmo, they’re both well and truly across how to get the most of the variety.

Tempranillo is grown under many names across the globe. By far the greatest plantings are in Spain, with over half a million acres planted to the variety. On of which Tinta Roriz I made Vintage Port with at Yarra Yering. It is typically grown in the Duoro ending up in Port contributing oppulent fruit, balancing the likes of Touriga Naçional and it’s structure.

Blue Note & Red Note

Roda (Red Note) formerly Roda II, Roda I (Blue Note) exemplify the difference in geology and geography across Rioja showing two of the general personalities they elicit.

Unlike Burgundy where a thin strip of land of more consistent aspect exists, Rioja is a vast area with significant difference in geology and geography.

… RODA vineyards are distributed in different ecosystems?
RODA cultivates 120 hectares of vineyard, 70 of those are self-owned and the 50 hectares left are from local growers with which we have different agreements. They are distributed in different ecosystems that go from altitudes of 380m to 650m above sea level.

… RODA vineyards are in an environment with the influence of three different climates?
The Cantabria and the Ibérica mountain range, merge in the Obarenes Mountains, a mountainous barrier only cleaved by the Ebro river. In this area we find the RODA vineyards where the Atlantic, Mediterranean and Continental climates capriciously play.
Roda’s vineyards are right next to Lopez di Heredia. For comparision their Viña Tondonia is Blue Note & Viña Bosconia Red Note.

Red Note

Red Note Mediterranean Temp.

Roda is a wine of great depth, tannin texture and playful grip and class but in a relatively fruity and approachable register. This tendency towards open-hearted red fruit and earth is augmented with judicious blending, depending on the year, of some Garnacha and/or Graciano.

Blue Note

Blue Note Atlantic Temp, western aspect.

“It is a wine with more structure, with deeper sensations of black fruits, greater wealth of minerals and more complexity, marked by black cherry.” Roda 1 is handled identically to Roda, but the blue-note fruit has a heightened minerality with fine but determined structure resulting from great sophistication, refinement, harmony and layering of tannin. The differences between Roda and Roda 1 are simply the product of fruit selection, not wine-making. It’s a wine of power with enormous finesse.

In the Vineyard

From the outset, Roda has been dedicated to selecting the best sites and working through disciplined R&D projects to optimise fruit quality. This approach has truly encouraged the personality of the vines to shine!

Roda wines are essentially ‘vinos de viñas viejas’ (old vines wines), from vineyards 2/3 owned, and all entirely managed by Roda. In Roda’s case, old vines are determined as 35 years or more, though most are 50+. The greater depth of roots and the larger volume of soil encompassed by old vines reduces the influence of drought or excess rain, balances yield and stabilises character. Old vines set smaller, more concentrated berries with much lower juice-skin ratios and more faithfully reflect the mineral nuances of soil through mature natural tannins and acid. Of late, When the Roda project was set up, extensive vineyard plantings were undertaken. For many years, this material planted by Roda was sold off on the bulk grape market. Nowadays, these 35yo+ plantings are incorproated into production, particularly of Sela.

All wines are from dry grown bush vines with three branches pruned ‘en vaso’. The vase-pruning form ventilates the plant and gives an excellent balance of light and shade for the fruit. Most of Roda’s plantings are Tempranillo, but depending on the year and the wine in question, some blending with Garnacha and or Graciano is undertaken. Mazuelo was used in earlier years.

Roda’s viticulture is organic, with vineyard (design-and management) plus biological controls taking care of pests. Yields average around 30 hl/ha. Each vineyard is handpicked several times over by Roda’s own picking team. To underscore their viticultural commitment, at 550m altitude near Cubillas they maintain the Enit research vineyard of some 582 distinct cultivars of Riojan vines! This vineyard-museum was planted in 2000 after 3 years’ full time work by a team of viticultors identifying all possible distinct cultivars of Riojan wine grapes.

Roda are obsessed with the close study of ripening, particularly phenolic ripeness, and over time this has evolved a truly unique house feel for textural tannins – not to mention a singular wine, Cirsion, entirely devoted to silky tannin expression. Their concern is to make plush, violet-velvet wines with rich fruit and full, soft tannins pushing to the margins of the fruit, but always contained within. The wines of Roda are destined for the table, and explicitly stand against the stream of (for want of a better word) ‘Parkery’ fruit and artefact bombs. As GM of Roda, Agustín Santolaya remarks, such “wines are only good for making an impression at tastings … their strength of flavour prevents enjoying more than one glass”. Agustín claims instead that Roda’s wines “find that magic balance between volume and airiness, voluptuousness and freshness; wines for enjoying from the moment they appear on the market but which live through many decades”.

In the Winery

For Bodegas Roda, everything is about the production and retention of grape quality: the approach to wine through viticulture is nowhere given more commitment, managed in the vineyard by Isidro Palacios and in the bodega by oenologist Carlos Diez. The winery is built into a mountain, and is a gravity-fed free run operation (you take a freight elevator to travel down through the hill from one stage of making to another). All fruit is hand de-stemmed and cooled, not pumped but transferred via fuit bins to one of 17 large clean vats, one per vineyard for a spontaneous (indigenous yeast) fermentation.

Each vineyard requires tailor-made vinification, but in general terms the process consists of three phases: cold pre-fermentation maceration, fermentation and post-fermentation maceration. Vattings take place during 18 to 20 days. Individual vineyards may be picked in several passes with fruit being added to the same wood cuve resulting in a continual ferment. Natural cold settling takes place in vat after malolactic. Each parcel ages separately until tasting for red/black spectrum and division into Roda/Roda 1 barrels. After spring there is a single assemblage racking – the young wine is gravity decanted down one level to age in French barrels, with a minimum of oxidative handling. Over time, the period spent in oak (for Roda and Roda 1) has come down from 18-20 months in earlier years, to 14-15 nowadays, and barrels are 40% new and the balance 1yo. The barrel ageing hall is climate-controlled, with a north-facing glass wall which opens to allow cold winter air in after malolactic fermentation is complete, stabilising the wine naturally. Once mature in barrel, the wines are decanted by gravity to bottle unfiltered, fined by nature.

Where in the World is Bodegas Roda?

BODEGAS RODA is located in the edge of the river Ebro, in a balcony of the Railway Station District (Barrio de la Estación) in Haro, La Rioja, over a XIX century “calado”. The vine growers used to use it to stock their harvests, that would be, subsequently, sent to Bordeaux by train to mitigate the damages caused by phylloxera.

Rioja and it’s three current subzones Alta, Alavesa and Baja achieve no meaningful distinction between vineyards and wines.

Baja translates to Low and is being replaced with Oriental given the negative quality conation of the word.

There is a growing push to better recognise quality terroir by define the:

1. Quality soils in Rioja at a macro level, equivalent to Appellation Bourgogne in Burgundy;
2. The individual villages or Pueblo of Rioja equivalent to a village in Burgundy like Gevrey-Chambertin or Chassagne-Montrachet; and
3. The special places (like lieu dit in Burgundy) & individual vineyards within the villages.

Only time will tell how this unfolds. In the meantime we’ll be including information on all of the wines we list from Rioja.

The area is vast with over 60,000Ha of vines planted. As Scott Wasley puts it, it’s the equivalent of using South East Australia to classify the wines NSW, Victora, SA and Tasmania. In the flyover below at the 20sec mark you’ll see a high level geological map of general soil types, it’s clear they run perpendicular to the general sub-region orientation along a number of rivers, valleys and sub-plains. The fact that I’ve mentioned both the split in soil types, and, significant geological changes if enough for any vigneron worth their salt to call for a more detailed differentiation between key viticultural areas of Rioja. Politics, corruption and a bias toward bland mass-produced wines the adversaries of progress on mapping the region. Without more appropriate classification of vineyards we have to rely on the reputation of quality producer and their track record in the glass. Perhaps not a bad thing for an individual wine. Not great for the reputation of a region as a whole.

Although not an official classification the map below would be a start to delineating between different areas of Rioja based on the Valleys within it. You can clearly see the rivers running through each of the valleys.

General in nature the soil map below offers some guidance on the geology of Rioja.