Category: Wine of the Week

La Bruja de Rozas 2020

Published 31. March 2023 by Vidar Kenneth Johansen

La Bruja de Rozas is Comando G’s entry level wine. It’s a village wine from several plots around Rozas de Puerto Real, in the western part of Madrid province. The vineyards are located around 850-900 meters above sea level, and the vines are 50-80 years old. Cultivation is organical and according to biodynamic principles. The grapes are spontaneously fermented with a large proportion of whole clusters in open vessels. Long and gentle maceration for 30-40 days. Maturation partly in large foudres of 3-6,000 litres, used 500-litre barrels and a small proportion in concrete. Unfined and unfiltered.

La Bruja de Rozas 2020 (Comando G)

Ruby red. Aromatic with mature red fruits (raspberry), flowers, spices (cinnamon), smoke and a mineral layer behind. Energetic, with young tannins, fresh acidity. It’s in a way juicy and concentrated at the same time.

Price: Medium

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Wine of the Week

Motor with drive

Published 24. March 2023 by Vidar Kenneth Johansen

Francesc Grimalt is leading figure in the restoration of the callet grape variety. In 2006 he teamed up with Sergi Caballero and founded the 4 Kilos winery. The name is an expression for 4 million pesetas, which was their initial investment to launch the company.

4 Kilos is based in Felanitx, in the inland of Mallorca. On this well-known holiday island the climate is mild Mediterranean, with dry and warm summers and very little rainfall. Francesc and Sergi practice an environmentally-friendly agriculture with a minimum of intervention.

The soils are clay loam containing ferric oxide. After the manual harvest with grapes selected in the vineyard, the juice was fermented in cubs (brick and concrete vats traditional in the area). Here the wine was aged for about 3 months. There was no added sulphites during the process.

Motor Callet 2021 (4 Kilos)

Ruby red. Aroma of mature raspberries and orange, and a layer of herbs. Juicy in the mouth, expressive, round and at the same time a fresh drive, some coffee in the back palate.

Price: Medium

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Wine of the Week

Crescendo from Liguria

Published 17. March 2023 by Vidar Kenneth Johansen

I don’t taste wines from Liguria too often. Here is a delicious white from the lesser known pigato variety.

Pigato has been in the area for centuries. Genetically it is a clone of vermentino. But it has differentiated over time and developed its own characteristics. Pighe means freckles in local dialect, a reference to the spots on its skin. Pigato has generally more aromatic qualities than its twin, possibly also more structure.

Tenuta Selvadolce is overlooking the sea in the extreme western Liguria in Bordighera, a few kilometers from the border with France. It extends for about 7 hectares in one of the most panoramic heights of the town.

The vineyard sits at an altitude of about 150-200 meters with a southern exposure, and managed biodynamically. The soils contain limestone and clay. Harvest is by hand, and fermentation takes place spontaneously in wood. The wine ages in stainless steel vats on lees with batonnage for 6 months and is bottled without clarification or filtration.

Crescendo 2020 (Ten. Selvadolce)

Light yellow. Expressive aromas of white fruit (white peach), citrus (lime), white almonds and a touch of butter. On the palate it’s full, savoury, harmonious and ends with a pleasant salinity.

Price: Medium

Food: Seafood, spaghetti vongole, other pasta ‘frutti di mare’, fish soup, grilled fish

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Wine of the Week

Landi’s Uvas de la Ira

Published 10. March 2023 by Vidar Kenneth Johansen

At home after two lovely days in Sierra de Gredos I was inspired to extend the trip a little. So I fetched a wine from the cellar. I had a couple of other quite recent vintages. But I chose the current, 2020, to be able to refill.

Daniel Jiménez-Landi is part of the dynamic duo Comando G. But his family has deep roots in the Toledo province, and this wine is from there, within the Méntrida denomination to be more exact.

Las Uvas de la Ira, meaning The Grapes of Wrath, is a village wine made from old-vine garnacha in four different vineyards high up in El Real de San Vicente, Gredos.

Uvas de la Ira 2020 (D. Jiménez-Landi)

Ruby red, blueish hint. Red fruits (raspberry, strawberry), flowers, a layer of smoke and stone minerality. It’s youthful and a bit fleshy in the mouth, with young tannins and a fresh acidity. It’s quite concentrated, at the same time it has an ethereal quality typical of Gredos garnachas.

Price: Medium

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Wine of the Week

Alba from Albillo

Published 3. March 2023 by Vidar Kenneth Johansen

Fabio Bartolomei was born in Scotland to Italian immigrant parents. There he studied accounting and finance. In 2001 he decided to move to Spain to make wine. For many years he also worked as a translator. It was not until 2019 that he became a full time winemaker.

Fabio knew from the start that he didn’t want to use pesticides or additives. But he didn’t know that natural wine was an expression for that kind of wines. Since 2014 he has used the old cooperative building in El Tiemblo as his winery.

Here you can read a short piece about yesterday’s lunch in that bodega.

Alba is an orange wine made with albillo real grapes. The grape was fermented with native yeasts with the skins, then pressed and finished in stainless steel. It was transferred to clay amphoras and matured there for five months. Unclarified, unfiltered and without added sulphites.

Alba 2021 (Vinos Ambiz)

Golden colour, hazy. Aromatic, with yellow apple, peach and flowers in front, then a layer of nuts with a touch of honey. Medium-bodied, luscious, drinkable and also quite long.

Price: Medium

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Wine of the Week

Rawditis

Published 24. February 2023 by Vidar Kenneth Johansen

Have you ever heard of roditis? This grape comes in many variations and clones throughout Greece. Robinson, Harding and Voillamoz (in the book Wine Grapes) say that it has generally low ambitions and often comes in field-blends. Here it is in its crude version, and with serious goals, a lovely natural wine from producer Oenops Wines of Drama.

Winemaker is Nikos Karatzas. The grapes come from old vineyards and are picked by hand. Fermentation is carried out with native yeasts in a clay pot, where the juice remains on the lees for a month. The wine stays in a for further a 6 months. No additions are made.

Rawditis is accompanied on the market by the equally ambitious and raw red Xinomavraw, also recommended.

Rawditis 2021 (Oenops)

Golden with orange hints. Expressive aroma of peach, apricot, white flowers, citrus peel, honey and a touch of smoke. Rich in the mouth, with a good acidity and some bitterness towards the end, long and dried-fruity finish.

Price: Medium

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Wine of the Week

Occhipinti’s Contrada BB

Published 17. February 2023 by Vidar Kenneth Johansen

Vino di Contrada is a series of three wines that come from specific sites in the same vineyard, planted exclusively with frappato. Here Arianna Occhipinti wishes to express various nuances that this magnificent grape can offer.

Contrada is a now unofficial subdivision of an Italian municipality. Bombolieri, or BB, comes from a site with a thin layer of sand over a rock with high content of limestone, much of it white in colour. This gives a wine that has a bit more structure and saturation than the other two.

All of Occhipinti’s vineyards are worked using biodynamic principles, and the work in the cellar is careful, never pushing the wine, but letting it take its time. Natural yeasts are employed, there is no temperature control, no fining or filtration and minimal SO2 at bottling.

Arianna Occhipinti is the niece of Giusto Occhipinti of the COS estate in Vittoria, south-eastern Sicily. Her wines have been featured in these pages. Here you can read one of several mentions of her wonderful entry-level red SP68.

Vino di Contrada BB 2019 (A. Occhipinti)

Clear red. Red fruits (raspberry, sour cherries), blackberry and an earthy note. Medium-bodied, concentrated, fine tannins, fresh acidity, a slight volatile touch and a long, salty finish.

Price: High

Food: Creamy pasta, light meat, antipasti

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Wine of the Week

Diwald’s Zündstoff

Published 10. February 2023 by Vidar Kenneth Johansen

Martin Diwald comes from a family of organic winegrowers in Wagram, northwest of Wien, though this project only dates from 2014.

This is his orange wine from the grape grüner veltliner, from a vineyard called Altweingarten. The grapes were hand-picked, de-stemmed and fermented on the skins. Every day the cap was punched down once or twice. 10–14 days later there was one gentle pressing before the wine matured in used 500 liter acacia barrels for 12 months. The wine was not fined or filtered, and only a small amount of sulphur was added.

Zündstoff translates as an explosion. It would maybe be tempting to use an analogy, an explosion of flavours. Anyway, it’s a tasty wine.

Zündstoff Grüner Veltliner 2021 (Diwald)

Light golden colour. Aroma of mature apples, hay, ginger and oranges. Medium-bodied, lightly textured, a slight touch of toffee, adecuate acidity and a nice bitter finish (grapefruit).

Price: Medium

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Wine of the Week

Forks and knives, a table wine

Published 3. February 2023 by Vidar Kenneth Johansen

Milan Nestarec’s Forks and Knives wine has changed somewhat over the years. It has been made with aromatic varietals, carbonics, and “sought-after expressions”, as Nestarec puts it. Now he calls it a “village wine”, a traditional, balanced and rich wine from his village. For the white wine this is Velké Bílovice, southeast of Brno and not far from the Austrian and Slovakian border, and the soil is loess. The grapes are now grüner veltliner, welschriesling and neuburger. The varieties are processed separately, some skin-contact overnight and very light pressing the day after. Fermentation was carried out in 3000 liter barrels. And, as he says, “no noise, no unnecessary bells and whistles, just purity and a lot of patience”. It was bottled late summer 2022, with no sulfur added, no fining, no filtration.

Forks and Knives 2020 (Milan Nestarec)

Golden colour, lightly cloudy. Aroma of mature apples, oranges, apricot, white flowers, and also a tiny volatile touch (which is good in these quantities). Full-bodied and rich, concentrated, lightly textured and with a good acidity. Long.

Price: Medium

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Wine of the Week

Calcareous bomb

Published 27. January 2023 by Vidar Kenneth Johansen

Valentina Passalacqua’s Calcarius project has been introduced before (like here).

A short overview: She disposes of a 80 hectares farm, where she grows vine, fruit and vegetables, based on biodynamic principles. The soils are Kimmeridgian calcareous (thus the name Calcarius). The wines, from indigenous varieties, have always great minerality and nerve.

This time it’s the Frecciabomb, an orange pét nat made from bombino bianco, an indigenous grape variety from Puglia. The Ca on the label is the symbol for calcium, 20 is its atomic number, and 40.08 is its molar mass.

Frecciabomb Orange 2021 (V. Passalacqua)

Orange, spritzy, some sediments on the bottom. Aroma of ripe pineapple, lemon, aromatic herbs, a touch acacia honey. Slight tannin in the mouth, fresh bubbles, medium concentration and great acidity.

Price: Medium

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