Pre-Phylloxera Vines in Rioja

Rioja is an ancient wine region in north central Spain. Phoenician settlers were producing wine in Rioja by the 11th century B.C.E., and it has continued there unabated for three millennia. The region is a large basin filled with alluvial deposits of limestone, sand and red ferruginous clay, washed down from the Sierra Cantabria mountains by eons of melting glaciers, ice age after ice age.

By the 1890's phylloxera, a root louse, had come to Rioja and the vineyards were devastated. The solution was to graft Vitis Vinifera, like Tempranillo, to hearty American rootstock, which is resistant to the pest. As with the great wine producing regions of France and Italy, the vineyards of Rioja were replanted en masse. Ungrafted ancient vines are almost impossible to find in Rioja, but they do exist.

Most of the vineyards of Rioja are on plateau, or low lazy hills of red clay and hard scrabble dirt, but just above the banks of a small creek I found a bed of white sand and some truly ancient vines. The fine dry sand, barren of organic matter or humus, was inhospitable to everything, except vines that could send tap roots dozens of feet down in search of food and water. Even phylloxera, the tenacious little aphid, could not survive the barren soil.

This vineyard, free from phylloxera, had never been replanted, all of it's vines were on original rootstock. When a vine is grafted, scar tissue forms a small necrosis which ultimately leads to the vine's demise by inhibiting it's ability to absorb water and nutrients. An ungrafted vine, free from this defect, can live for hundreds of years. The vines in front of me were at least 120 years old.

As a vine gets older it produces ever decreasing quantities of better and better fruit. Vines of this age are prized. Their fruit produces wine of tremendous concentration, with a texture that can be mimicked with extraction techniques and new American oak but never quite achieved.

As these vines had aged and their yields had fallen, one arm had been driven down into the soil where it reemerged as a new vine. The offspring in turn had also been woven back down into the soil, and again a new, younger vine arose. In front of me were three generations of Temparnillo , all connected, one glorious vine. Grandfather, Father, and Son.

Special Thanks to Drew Viner who had the presence of mind to take photos, while the rest of us ate and drank like Satyrs