March 2025 Crianza Club
  
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Faustino 2020 Crianza RiojaRegular Price: $17.99
Club Price: $15.29
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This writeup is going to take us around the track three times, fast, and with many turns. We will cover cars, art history, and current politics, all wrapped around a bottle of wine. Buckle up and let’s go. Three laps ahead.
Lap 1 of our journey is fast (and maybe a bit shallow). Speaking of cars and driving, if a famous sports car maker were to make a non-sports car, what would it look like? We don’t have to guess. Porsche did it in 2003, moving from its iconic 911 low-to-the ground sports coupes to making a family size SUV, the Porsche Cayenne. Great for soccer moms, meh for the enthusiast. Lamborghini, known as maker of flounder-flat supercars like the Lamborghini Aventador, barely half a person’s height and faster than a banshee, launched its comparatively sedate sedan called the Ursus in 2018. Sexy for pulling into a Vegas hotel for the weekend, but not the head turning 2.3 sec 0-60 prowess of its flatter cousin. Down-market luxury derivative products always strike me as being two sides of the same coin, called compromise. One facet of the coin is making the rare and unattainable available to the rest of us. The other facet is managing to imbue the derivative with some of what makes the original so desirable. Is the result as amazing as the original? No! Does it convey some of its maker's pedigree? Yes! Thus, Ursus is to Aventador what Faustino Crianza is to Faustino I Grand Reserva.
Lap 2 of our little writeup is waaaay longer and slower. Here, we dive into the surprisingly deep and surprisingly contemporary meaning of the wine’s label, or more precisely the symbology of the portrait that graces the label of every Faustino wine. This portrait by now is an iconic symbol of Spanish and Rioja wines. How it came to be is worth a deep dive. Don Faustino Martinez Perez de Albeniz was the 2nd generation proprietor of a Rioja winery founded in 1861 by Eleuterio Martinez Arzok. In 1956, Don Faustino decided to start exporting wines to Austria and, in preparation, rebranded the wines to use his name Faustino along with using a likeness of a famous painting of “Dr. Faust” by Rembrandt for the label. Now, “who is Dr. Faust”, you might ask? Why did Rembrandt paint him not just once, but many times? Faust, it turns out, is a legend with symbolic and deep meaning in modern art and literature. The legend of Faust is loosely based on the person of Johann Georg Faust (c 1480–1540), an alchemist and practitioner of necromancy (communication with the dead, a sort of black magic.) He is believed to have studied at the University of Heidelberg, apparently died in an explosion, but not much is known about him.
Image courtesy of the BBC/Alamy
His legend circulated for almost 50 years, gaining in popularity by way of ‘chapbooks’, the 15th century format of street literature, widely circulated and read. These chapbooks ultimately inspired playwright Christopher Marlow’s play The Tragical History of the Life and Death of Doctor Faustus, according to a BBC piece, first performed in London in 1592. The most famous and significant interpretation of the legend is later undertaken by famous German poet and author Johann Wolfgang von Goethe in the form of an epic two part poem about Faust written from 1808 to 1831. The core of the Faustian legend is that of a man who sells his soul to the devil in trade for worldly knowledge and pleasure. In a succinct summary on Wikipedia:
"Faust is unsatisfied with his life as a scholar and becomes depressed. After an attempt to take his own life, he calls on the Devil for further knowledge and magic powers with which to indulge all the pleasure and knowledge of the world. In response, the Devil's representative, Mephistopheles, appears. He makes a bargain with Faust: Mephistopheles will serve Faust with his magic powers for a set number of years, but at the end of the term, the Devil will claim Faust's soul, and Faust will be eternally enslaved. " source : Wikipedia
Due to its resonance with themes that recur in fascist regimes, where many are forced to “sell their souls" to the evils of fascism in trade for worldly comforts of surviving within the fascist regime, Faustian myth has penetrated much of modern 20th century western culture, showing up anywhere from opera to ballet and modern plays. In 1936, Klaus Mann wrote Mephisto, a novel with a Faustian theme describing an actor who sells his soul to the Nazi regime to appear in a movie. Friedrich Dürrenmatt’s 1956 play The Visit deals with townspeople being offered bribes to kill fellow citizens. While this is pure conjecture, maybe in some small way, winery owner Don Faustino’s choice of Faust for a wine label had to do with the prevalence and pertinence of Faustian “memes” all around him in the midst of fascist Franco Spain. But the pertinence of Faust didn't end in the 1950s. As is brilliantly pointed out in a 2017 BBC article “What the myth of Faust can teach us”, Faustian is all around us, now more than ever. I personally see the deals we witness being made in US politics on a daily basis as very Faustian. Yes, you Marco Rubio. I highly recommend giving the BBC article a read. While 2017 is a long 8 years ago, the article is even more pertinent here and now in 2025. If you are not of the type that has a glass of wine to shut out the mad world we live in, give the article a read with a glass of Faustino in hand.
Lap 3 of this adventure brings us back from the detour through the land of art and politics to the land of wine. Faustino is, after all, a famous winery in Spain. It has a long history, as touched on above. Dating back to 1861, it has evolved to become part of the portfolio of wineries within the Martinez Zabala Family. This group controls over 2,200 hectares of vineyards, not a small operation, and spans across its origin region of Rioja, Ribera Del Duero, La Mancha, and Rueda. This group of wineries coincidentally also includes Portia, the maker of the other Crianza wine this month. The origin of the grapes for this wine are not precisely described other than being from the Rioja DoC. Let's just say that a wine at this production level cometh not from a single vineyard. Faustino’s Crianza is 100% Tempranillo, aged for 12 months in American oak barrels. It has the fruit typical bright red cherry nose and palate of a young Tempranillo, framed by the warm toastiness of American Oak, on which it ages for 12 months. It is likely in one of the many barrels in this photo, showing one of the barrel rooms at Faustino. It is a very solid wine from one of Spain's top wineries, and just like the Lamborghini Ursus injects enough Italian racer into a soccer moms sedan, so does the Faustino Crianza make me feel Faustino Grand Reserva stylish for a glass. Best of all, you don’t have to sell your soul to the devil to enjoy it.
 
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Portia Roble 2022
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For the second Crianza wine, we chose the Portia Red Roble, a bold and elegant wine from the renowned Portia Winery, located in Spain’s celebrated Ribera del Duero region.
Bodegas Portia is a relatively young winery, but it comes with a strong pedigree. It is part of the Grupo Faustino (yes, the same one we wrote about in the Faustino writeup above), a family-owned wine empire with more than 160 years of winemaking history in Spain. With their deep experience in Rioja, the Faustino family saw the untapped potential in Ribera del Duero and founded Portia in the early 2000s. The winery itself is a masterpiece of modern architecture, designed by the world-renowned Norman Foster. Built in the shape of a three-pointed star, each section of the winery is dedicated to a different stage of the winemaking process—fermentation, aging, and bottling—ensuring efficiency and precision at every step. It was no small undertaking, as readily available YouTube videos of the construction (which took three years) show. The fusion of cutting-edge technology and traditional craftsmanship in the building allows Portia to create wines that reflect the essence of Ribera del Duero while embracing innovation.
The grapes for Portia Red Roble are sourced from vineyards planted at high altitudes, where the extreme climate and chalky, well-draining soils create ideal conditions for Tempranillo to thrive. Ribera del Duero experiences hot summers and cold winters, with dramatic temperature shifts between day and night, which help the grapes develop rich concentration and natural acidity—key elements for wines with structure and aging potential. The winery’s meticulous selection process ensures that only the best fruit makes it into this wines, which is then aged for 3 months in oak barrels before additional bottle aging. The winery has a video online that show just how much effort, precision, care and machinery is applied to sorting and selecting the grapes that make it into the fermentation tanks. The result of this meticulous selection is an incredibly smooth wine for its age. It shows bright cherry fruit in perfect balance with the toasty notes from the oak. Tannins are pronounced but well integrated, making this a great match for grilled meats, stews, medium ripe cheeses and oily fish. And at this price, it may become a regular guest at your midweek dinner table.
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