Month: January 2025

From Europe’s highest vineyard

Published 31. January 2025 by Vidar Kenneth Johansen

Three months ago I had contact with José Andrés Prieto that ended with an agreement to visit in Inazares, Murcia, when I was going on holiday. Then suddenly and unexpectedly he died, on the 30th of November. (Here is an article in Spanish from local paper La Verdad.) I didn’t contact the family then, but I will. All I did was to buy his wine again in the excellent delicatessen shop Sabor y Tradición, just down the road from our flat in Murcia city.

This project was started by two brothers-in-law and their wives in 2005. At the time they didn’t have any knowledge about farming or winegrowing, but got advice from Vinitech Bordeaux. After seven years oenologist María José Fernández Llamas joined the project. They follow a philosophy of minimal intervention and sustainability.

A few years ago I reported from Pedro Olivares’ vineyards nearby, in Inazares, a hamlet of Moratalla municipality. (Read about it here.) This project is now abandoned. This means that it’s little doubt that the highest (at least commercial) vineyards in Europe is now Alto de Inazares’ vineyard at 1.373 meters.

The grapes are viognier, chardonnay, gewürztraminer, sauvignon blanc and riesling, planted in 2011 and cultivated organically on trellises, with a simple cordon royat. The grapes are hand-harvested and destemmed. After a light pressing skin maceration is carried out for 6 hours. The clarification is done by a natural settling of the sediments. The wine is aged on lees in steel for 6 months.

Blanco de Blancas 2021 (Alto de Inazares)

Straw yellow. Plenty of aromatics, with citrus (lemon), floral and herbal notes, and a slight tropical hint (melon). Fresh in the mouth, concentrated, mineral, with a vivid acidity and a long aftertaste. Full of energy.

Price: Medium

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Wine of the Week

Rich white Jumilla

Published 24. January 2025 by Vidar Kenneth Johansen

This wine was enjoyed with a savoury fish dish at the restaurant Pura Cepa in Murcia city.

It’s made by the Pacheco family winery, or: Bodegas Viña Elena, in Jumilla. Elena Pacheco is third generation, the winery being founded by her grandfather Francisco in 1948, who then started making wine with modest equipment. 4th generation is today working in the winery, and in oenology Elena has great help from Pilar Abellán, who has been with the winery for more than 20 years. The cultivation is always organic.

The vineyard for this wine is located in the Estrecho de Marín valley, south of the town of Jumilla. They are young, planted in 2018 in bush and dry land. The varieties are white Mediterranean, including garnacha blanca.

The wine was fermented in stainless steel tanks at a temperature of 16 ºC and aged in 500L French oak barrels for 7 months. Plate and amicrobial filtration.

Familia Pacheco Edición Especial 2022 (Viña Elena)

Light golden colour. Aroma of melon and baked citrus, with a layer of nuts and butter, and with notes of vanilla. Rich and structured in the mouth, tasty, well-integrated wood, with decent acidity and long and persistent finish.

Price: Medium

Food: Tasty fish dishes, grilled fish, light meat

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Wine of the Week

Nat pinotage

Published 17. January 2025 by Vidar Kenneth Johansen

Last week I hosted a rather unlikely tasting, of wines from granite soils worldwide. There were some well-known wines. This one I would probably not have come across if it weren’t because I was searching for adequate wines from South Africa.

It’s made from pinotage, a cross between cinsault and pinot noir, that has become something of a national grape in South Africa. Usually made in a riper style, this one is lighter and fresher, somewhat reminiscent of its parentage. Alex Milner at Natte Valleij is otherwise known for his attraction to the cinsault variety.

The bush-vines were planted in 1997 in the Darling area, only 16km form the cold Atlantic ocean. The grapes were harvested by hand and sorted by hand in the cellar. Fermentation is spontaneous in large concrete open fermenters, with a gentle extraction only with punch-downs. The wine is then left undisturbed in 1500L concrete eggs and seasoned barrels for 9 months.

Nat Pinotage 2023 (Natte Valleij)

Dark cherry with a purple touch. Aroma of dark fruits (blackberry, morello), with some animal notes and a light touch of tarmac. Light to medium-bodied, firm but elegant tannins, and a fresh and balanced acidity.

Price: Low

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Wine of the Week

Outstanding from Ourense

Published 10. January 2025 by Vidar Kenneth Johansen

We had this wine at the Pura Cepa restaurant in Murcia. It was chosen from a quite extensive by the glass menu to go with a savoury turbot dish.

The Lagar de Sabaríz winery is located in San Amaro in Ourense, Galicia, that is just outside the boundaries of the DO Ribeiro. The founder Pilar Higuero works her vineyards biodynamically, though the climate is heavily influenced by the Atlantic and has high yearly rainfall.

The vineyard covers four hectares, at 400 metres above sea level, high for Ribeiro. The soil is granitic, which is typical for the area.

A Pita Cega is the Galician name for a children’s game. The varieties are mainly treixadura and albariño, with a collection of other grapes.

Grape bunches are pressed with stems and the must ferments with natural yeasts. The wine doesn’t undergo malolactic fermentation and there is no bâtonnage. It ages for 1 year in stainless steel, and a little sulphur dioxide is added before bottling.

The bottles weigh less than 400 g. And they bear no labels, as Pilar herself paints every bottle by hand. The corks come from protected forests.

A Pita Cega 2015 (Lagar de Sabariz)

Pale cold yellow colour. Fresh aroma of apricot, citrus (baked lemon), pears and white flowers, towards a flinty background. In the mouth it’s fresh with a granitic minerality, with a lot of nerve, and with a slightly bitter and pleasant, long aftertaste. This is outstanding quality, The freshness is impressive for a wine of this age, and it should have many years ahead.

Price: Medium

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Articles

Some reds at La Gracia, Murcia

Published 6. January 2025 by Vidar Kenneth Johansen

It’s always a pleasure to come back to La Gracia natural wine bar in the centre of Murcia. They have a small but carefully crafted selection of wines. And I know I can trust sommelier Esperanza Pérez and let her just chose something.

This Christmas and New Year I visited twice. Though the temperature was quite low we chose to sit outside, so the descriptions might suffer a bit. I had two wines that I have described before. You can read about the local Negrete 2021 (Negre- T Blue) here and Navaciegos (Cható Gañán), Gredos here. Sorry, I didn’t get the vintage of the latter, but it was probably 2019.

Here follow two wines that both were perfect for a cold winter’s afternoon, with 15 and 14,5% alcohol respectively.

Ninja de las Uvas 2022 is made by Julia Casado, or La del Terreno, as she calls her project. It’s located in the Sierra de Lavia regional park in Murcia, and the wine comes under the designation DO Bullas. We are in monastrell country, but this wine is in fact made of garnacha tinta. It’s made with grapes from 20 year old vines planted in clay and calcareous gravel soil at 750 metres above sea level and tended organically. The grapes are 90% destemmed and macerated for 15 days, with malolactic fermentation in used barrels. Bottled without being filtered, clarified or adding sulphur. It’s a unique wine with some warmth, but with a lovely fruit quality (morello, plums), complemented by aromatic herbs and coffee. It fills the mouth with its roundness and is perfect in the cold Murcian winter.

Ars Nova 2016 is from Navarra, made by Bodega Tandem, that is José Maria Fraile and Alicia Eyaralar. They are committed to little intervention. The grapes are cultivated in the Yerri valley, in western Navarra, that is, as sommelier Esperanza points out, close to Rioja Alavesa.

It’s made of Navarra’s trilogy of grapes, cabernet sauvignon, merlot and tempranillo. Fermentation took place at controlled temperatures of 28°C, with a careful extraction. Pumps were not used, instead, the wine was racked by gravity into concrete vats. The wine was not cold stabilised or fined. It spent 24 months in concrete vats, followed by nine months in French oak. Super black fruit, with olive and spice. It’s full in the mouth, with nice concentration. Perfect for this kind of setting.

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Wine of the Week

Sparkling new year

Published 3. January 2025 by Vidar Kenneth Johansen

This wine was opened to salute the new year 2025.

Raventós i Blanc is one of the leading producers of sparkling wine in Catalunya. Pepe Raventós has family links to the creator of the drink that came to be called cava. Still he was one of the first to leave the DO Cava, to establish his own appellation Conca del Riu Anoia. It is located in the Penedés comarca (area), in a valley between the Prelitoral and Litoral mountain ranges.

Raventós i Blanc makes mineral and saline wines, at a quality that is incredibly stable. I have never been disappointed.

De la Finca comes from a vineyard known as Vinya dels Fòssils. The old bush-trained vines were planted in 1964 on the highest terraces of the Anoia, on a soil covered with marine fossils. The orientation is predominantly northern, and there is spontaneous plant covers, that contribute to bring freshness to the wine. Viticulture is biodynamic. The grapes are the traditional blend xarel.lo, macabeu and parellada. Each variety and soil is vinified separately before settling together.

De La Finca 2021 (Raventós i Blanc)

Light straw yellow with fine bubbles. Aromas of lemon, yeast, lime and brioche, over a layer of smoke and herbs. Mineral in the mouth, a little austere, with a fresh acidity, completely dry. It’s Mediterranean in its ripeness, but it also shows a fresh side. Wonderfully balanced.

Price: Medium

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