与西班牙最著名的酿酒师重新构想Rioja亚搏电竞

When Álvaro Palacios isn’t making wine in Rioja, the Priorat or Bierzo, or jetting off to conferences inPortugalor tastings inHong Kong, or touching down for distributor meetings in one of the 90 countries that sells hiswines，当他不这样做（基本上从来都不是）时，他喜欢做的是在他出生的里奥扬小镇阿尔法罗（Alfaro）上方的山丘上骑马。

实际上,骑着他的马是两件事th之一at Palacios likes to do when he isn’t working. The other is to hang out with his childhood friends, eating great food and (as you might imagine) drinking wine. So a Saturday when he gets to do both is a rare pleasure. “My friends ask me, ‘When are you coming back to Alfaro?’ ” he says, unbuckling Califa’s girth and taking off the heavy saddle. The horse is lathered with sweat; the hills are steep, the sun is high and they’ve been riding for three hours now. “I have to tell them, ‘Not this week, not the next, not the one after…’ But this is what I really love—being here, drinking wine with the people I know.”

Hereis a remote farmhouse nestled way above the dun-colored plains of Rioja Baja, a few minutes drive from his La Montesa and Valmira vineyards. The place was falling to ruins when he bought it several years ago. Decades before, it had belonged to a shepherd Palacios knew when he was a boy. “He used to walk the five miles into Alfaro with a donkey and a cart to deliver goat’s milk,” he says. The shepherd slept on one side of the house, his goats on the other. There are no goats in the bedroom these days, but when Palacios rebuilt the farmhouse, he took care to make the place as traditional as possible, down to the chalk mortar between the stones in the walls and the woven cane mats for the ceiling. “There’s only one man who can still do that kind of cane work,” he says, “a few towns over. He’s the only one left.”

He adds: “This is a magical place. I always feel like I’m getting in touch with my ancestors here.” After hitching Califa to a nearby olive tree, he gives the horse a fond pat on the neck. “They have the biggest lungs, Arabians. He’s amazing. He never stops.”

人们也可以说ÁlvaroPalacios。部分原因是地理。如果您是三个地区的三个主要酿酒厂的所有者，那么您总是在旅途中。亚搏电竞他说：“在收获期间，我每周开车1200英里。”“这很疯狂。但是你还能做什么？”

And so Palacios is constantly moving, constantly working, filled with the restlessness that’s innately tied to fierce ambition. Never mind that’s he’s arguably Spain’s most famous winemaker. Never mind that his iconic Priorat red, L’Ermita, is widely recognized as one of the world’s iconic wines (and priced as such, at $1,000 a bottle). Despite all the accolades, it’s clear that Palacios still feels compelled to make his wines ever better, ever more expressive of the vineyards they come from. Some of that drive is internal, but some is the pressure that comes with reputation. As he says, “L’Ermita is like a great bull that you have to fight every year in the biggest bull ring in Madrid, and you are going to be watched by the hardest critics of bullfighting to see whether you make even the slightest mistake.”

帕拉西奥斯（Palacios）在阿尔法罗（Alfaro）的家人的酒亚搏电竞庄Herencia Remondo（现为Palacios Remondo）长大。在九个孩子中的第七个孩子中，他开始在10岁之前在酿酒厂的商店工作，用廉价的里奥哈（Rioja）为穿过城镇的卡亚搏电竞车司机重新装满了六升玻璃瓶。他20岁生日后不久，他正在帮助酿酒厂的出口，前往英格兰，法国和美国。亚搏电竞他在波尔多大学学习了Enology，并在纳帕谷的Stags的Leap Winery和波尔多的Pétrus工作。亚搏电竞他说：“我父亲把我变成了完美的机器。”“我拥有经营酒庄所需的一切技能，我做了什么？亚搏电竞我告诉他，‘爸爸，我要去先前做自己的葡萄酒。’我无法想象我的孩子是否对我说了。”亚搏电竞

Now one of Spain’s most famous wine regions, the Priorat back then was an impoverished, mountainous backwater whose wines mostly were sent in tanker trucks down to Valencia to be sold in bulk. But those rocky, remote hillsides were filled with ancient Garnacha and Cinsaut vines, largely abandoned in the aftermath of the Spanish Civil War. The person who first realized the region’s potential was a winemaker named René Barbier, who happened to work in the export department at Herencia Remondo. “My father and René, those two guys were my heroes,” Palacios says. “But they were completely different. My father was very correct, very traditional. René was a total hippie. We’d tour around Europe together doing sales trips in his old motor home.”

帕拉西奥亚搏电竞斯（Palacios）在先验的葡萄酒中酿造的葡萄酒使他在全球范围内成名。因此，不难猜测10年后的90年代后期发生了什么事，当时他的侄子里卡多（Ricardo）告诉他关于比尔佐（Bierzo），这是另一个贫穷的地区，有着惊人的，长期以来久远的旧葡萄园葡萄园。帕拉西奥斯（Palacios）做出了一种您的手势：“我总是去美丽的地方，山坡，山坡，mu子和马匹进行耕种。这也是我的利己主义者。那里没有人，所以你首先是。”

In Bierzo, he and Ricardo established Descendientes de J. Palacios, focusing on the obscure Mencía grape. The wines were, again, a groundbreaking success—complex reds with the tensile strength of Bordeaux and the aromatic nuance of Burgundy, made from stubby, 100-year-old Mencía vines clinging to schist hillsides near the small town of Corullón.

然后，出乎意料的是，帕拉西奥斯的父亲去世了。“他78岁，”帕拉西奥斯回忆道。“ Priorat进展顺利，然后我开始了Bierzo，然后 - Boom。我的生活完全改变了。”他立即回到阿尔法罗（Alfaro），帮助跑步（并最终负责）家庭酒庄。亚搏电竞很明显他别无选择，就像很明显他没有后悔。“您始终记得您第一次吃面包的城镇 - 这是家。Priorat是我自己制作的地方，但是Rioja是我出生的地方。”

Rioja, though, is not the Priorat, nor is it Bierzo. It’s the opposite: Spain’s most recognized and most historic wine region, and in many ways the country’s most traditional. It’s possible to impose your ego on a remote place everyone else has forgotten, but not as easy to do so on a region where the largest wineries make tens of millions of bottles, and the most storied have legacies going back generations. But, Palacios cheerfully admits, “I don’t like easy things.”

Which may partly explain his passion for the Garnacha grape (or Grenache, if you’re French). In Rioja, Tempranillo is king; it’s like Cabernet in Napa Valley. Garnacha is a hanger-on at the court—useful as a blending grape to moderate Tempranillo’s sometimes stern tannins and add some juicy vivaciousness, but hardly the center of attention. And yet, after taking control of his family’s winery, Palacios almost immediately began a project to graft all of their Tempranillo vines over to Garnacha. He firmly believes that the climate and land of Rioja Baja aren’t really suited to the region’s signature grape. “Tempranillo is great in Rioja Alta, but that has a more Atlantic climate. It’s cooler, and rainier, too,” he says. “In the end, in Baja, you don’t get the freshness and liveliness with Tempranillo that you do with Garnacha.”

他的兴趣也是历史性的。直到1980年代，Garnacha一直是Baja的主要葡萄。出于经济原因 - 易植物更容易种植和销售 - 农民开始剥夺旧葡萄园，并用更受欢迎的葡萄重新种植它们。帕拉西奥斯（Palacios）试图扭转这种潮流。“有人说像La Montesa这样的葡萄酒 - 我亚搏电竞们的旗舰葡萄酒是Garnacha的90％ - 这不是Rioja。但这是从里奥哈！当我第一次重新种植时，我与阿尔法罗的一些老农民进行了交谈。他们会对我说，‘阿尔瓦里托，你在那里做什么？看起来您正在种植青豆。’但是后来他们品尝了La Montesa，并说：“啊 - 这就是Rioja曾经的样子。’我的生活一直在寻找这些口味。”

Today, Palacios and his friends are sitting around a table in the sun, singing a Basque drinking song. “贝贝,贝贝,贝贝es un gran placer! El agua para bañarse y pa las ranas, que nadan bien!” (“To drink, to drink, to drink is a great pleasure! Water is for washing and for the frogs, that swim so well!”) Appropriately, Palacios is pouring wine: the 2015 vintage of La Montesa, high-toned and floral.

农舍周围百里香的尘土气味 - 这里到处都是狂野的气味 - 很快就被Rioja的另一种经典香气烤羊肉所淹没。嫩的烟熏chuletillas（婴儿羊排）出现，在葡萄树的余烬上燃烧，这是一种传统的里奥贾（Riojan）准备。脆patatas bravas肉类伴随着浓郁的薄甜菜和洋葱沙拉。酒流。亚搏电竞现在，这是2012年的Pripiedad，从一个80岁的葡萄园中浓缩了红色。帕拉西奥斯（Palacios）品尝它，向后倾斜并在空中挥手一只手，好像他在执行一个无形的乐团一样。“ Garnacha！”他说。“您会感觉到个性 - 如果您在这里做Tempranillo，就永远不会得到；你失去了灵魂。”

为了限制午餐，帕拉西奥斯（Palacios）打开了几瓶他最新的，最雄心勃勃的里奥哈红（Rioja Red），Quiñonde Valmira。它几乎没有来自一个高空葡萄园，离农舍不远。The first official vintage is 2014, but Palacios has been making experimental cuvées from the vineyard since 2005. “It wasn’t until I opened a bottle of the 2006 six years later, in 2012, that I really, really knew,” he says. “The wine was like an elixir.” Just as with L’Ermita and his top Bierzo wine, La Faraona, it’s a liquid interpretation of the soul of a vineyard—and a definitive expression of Spanish terroir.

出来烤烤箱烤苹果和桃红色的红酒，他长大的甜点。亚搏电竞太阳开始下山。帕拉西奥斯（Palacios）加入了他朋友的要求，然后进入农舍拿起吉他。他是弗拉门戈（Flamenco Aficionado）的长期，他是一位有才华的球员。当他开始旋转旋律时，他的朋友RubénBermejo回忆起他们二十多岁时的故事。有一天，当他们在Logroño的Calle del Laurel徘徊，停在西班牙小吃中时，Bermejo试图说服他的朋友在他开始的一支摇滚乐队中唱歌。“Álvaro的声音很棒，”贝尔梅霍说。但是那天，帕拉西奥斯（Palacios）的想法是在葡萄酒上，而不是音乐上亚搏电竞，在一家小餐厅里，他向他的朋友指出了一瓶传奇的波尔多·佩特鲁斯（BorteauxChâteauPétrus），在酒吧后面的架子上。“他告诉我，‘总有一天，我会这样酿造葡萄酒，”贝尔梅霍回忆道。亚搏电竞“我以为他是一个白日梦，但我也知道他有多热情。 So I thought, Well, maybe he will.”

2015 Palacios Remondo La Montesa ($22)

这是帕拉西奥斯（Palacios）的主要葡萄酒（从他的亚搏电竞里奥哈（Rioja）庄园（Rioja Estate）（价格相对较小的价格）。它表现得很明亮，充满了旧藤蔓加纳查的充满活力的覆盆子风味。

2015 Descendientes de J.PalaciosPétalos（$ 24）

The most affordable red from Palacios’s ambitious Bierzo estate has the aromatic leafiness that’s characteristic of the Mencía grape, backed up by dark-berry fruit flavors.

2014 palacios remondoplácetvaltomellso($45)

Palacios has continued to produce this melon-y old-vine white partly as an homage to his father, who made it before him. Its savory depth of flavor and exotic smoky notes are irresistible.

2012 Palacios Remondo Priviedad（50美元）

一个80年历史的葡萄园为这种樱桃味的红色提供了大部分的Garnacha。La Montesa葡萄园较旧部分的少量果实有助于增加复杂性。

2015FincaDofí（$ 85）

除非您是亿万富翁，否则跳过了帕拉西奥斯（Palacios）华丽但令人震惊的昂贵l'ermita，并寻找这是他原始的先验红色。首先，花卉和薄荷味为成熟的草莓和黑醋栗的肉质层打开。

Tondeluna:This innovative Logroño tapas spot has been jammed ever since Rioja’s star chef Francis Paniego opened it in 2011. Sit down at one of the family-style tables for dishes like hake confit with peppers and rice puree.

Taberna Herrerías:Craving baby lamb chops and other typical Riojan dishes? Head to this 16th-century mansion in Logroño for beautifully prepared renditions of the classics.

Rekondo:An hour-and-a-half drive to San Sebastián brings you to what may be the greatest cellar of old Riojas ever. The handwritten list offers hundreds of vintages back to the 1920s, at astonishingly reasonable prices.

Hotel Marqés De Riscal:This striking Frank Gehry–designed hotel—somehow grafted, in all its warped-metal glory, onto the very traditional Marqués de Riscal winery—is a must-stay. The Michelin one-star restaurant carries on the avant-garde theme with dishes like smoked sheep cheese foam with foie gras crumbs and dehydrated herbs.

Hotel Marqués De Vallejo:The old-school name belies this hotel’s modernist design: think lots of white, plus videos projected on one of the restaurant’s walls. That aside, the location, mere steps from Logroño’s famed tapas-crawl street, Calle del Laurel, is impossible to beat.