Viura, shy and eternal

Viura is not explosive or immediate, nor is it very expressive at first, but it goes a long way, it's like a long distance runner. Our winemaker, Chema Ryan, praises the virtues of Rioja's main white variety, comparing it with a long-suffering and little-glittering athlete who, in the end, makes a great performance and there she is, fresh and calm.

Rioja's white vine is a resistant and high yield grape, with an extraordinary ability to adapt to different types of soils and climatic conditions. In the clay-calcareous slopes of Rioja Alavesa and Rioja Alta it is well attuned, and it is also favoured in alluvial soils of a certain altitude, such as Yerga mountain hillsides.

Viura's fruits are large and have a fine golden skin. The wine stands out for its balance and appreciable acidity. It is relatively short on the nose, where we barely notice subtle notes of white flowers and brushwood herbs, in a tenuous and limited aromatic complexity. But this shyness becomes energy and freshness in the mouth, offering wines with great gastronomic possibilities. Our Muriel Fincas de la Villa Blanco and Viña Eguía Blanco, for example, have in their apparent simplicity the virtue of matching and enhancing the flavours of a wide range of recipes, tapas and dishes.

 

 

Mature wines

But where the Viura excels is in the aged wines. Its strength, combined with a vibrant acidity, is key to aging. Our ancestors knew it very well and that's why this variety has been used since ancient times to produce the great Rioja white wines, one of the hallmarks of the denomination.

Today the mature Rioja whites live a deserved renaissance. As an interesting article in the blog Con el Morro Fino states, "we live in a fast world and perhaps nobody is prepared to wait for an infinite time to drink a bottle, but it is wonderful to drink 40-years-old white wines. What these beings of light unfold is within the reach of very few. "

In the Muriel Wines catalog we have good samples of these mature whites, such as Viña Muriel Blanco Reserva and, above all, Conde de los Andes old vintages. We currently market the 2003 Semi-sweet and a limited release of the 1983 harvest. These bottles have rested for decades in the darkness of Ollauri's underground cellars, in the ideal conditions for our 'long distance runner' to take her time.

Old Viura vines in a vineyard in Rioja Alavesa"