Here is an ecologic cava from the varieties pansa blanca (local name for xarel.lo), macabeu and parellada. The Alta Alella winery is run by the Pujol-Busquets family in the Serralada de Marina Natural Park, just north of the city of Barcelona. Mireia, daughter of founders Josep Maria and Cristina Pujol-Busquets, is currently wine-maker.
Alta Alella’s wines are made from their own grapes. The soils are low in pH, which compensates for the warm Mediterranean climate and give acidity to the wines. They are based on the decomposed granite called sauló, with a sandy texture and good drainage.
All work in the vineyard is manual. After a gentle pressing each of the varieties for this wine ferment separately. Then there is a second fermentation in bottle following the traditional Champenoise method. Unfermented must is used to provide the sugar for the secondary fermentation in bottle, and SO2 is added only after disgorging. The ageing on lees is 30 months (thus the youngest of their cavas). It is disgorged before release, with the disgorgement date noted on the label.
None of Alta Alella’s wines receives dosage.
Mirgin Gran Reserva 2017(Alta Alella)
Light straw. Fruity, green apple, lemon peel, chalk and some brioche autolycic quality. Full in the mouth, mellow mousse, good acidity, dry, saline, long.
Bendito Vinos y Vinilos (wine and vinyl) is an all natural wine bar in Madrid’s Lavapiés barrio. This hilly neighborhood was earlier a cheap place that attracted many immigrants. (Here is a link to another restaurant, to be published.) Bendito is located inside the multicultural San Fernando market, that looks like a gathering place for the cultures they represent. Lavapiés is now the most international neighborhood in Madrid. Once the Jewish quarter, much later the immigrants actually established many bars here. After Spain’s entry into the EU, there was a new wave of migration. Therefore Bendito is a good place to get to learn about the changes in Spanish culture and gastronomy.
Owner José González selects cheeses and hams from many places. These are served with economic down-to-earth wines chosen by Ilan Saltzman, wine responsible, while the vinyl records spins in the background. By the way, Bar Bendito means the blessed bar, with all the allegories that it is possible to derive from that name.
I was there last Friday and the following Sunday and enjoyed a handful of wines both days, all served with small bites of cheese or charcuterie. This report is mainly based on the first visit.
One of the wines that night was Pampaneo Airén 2020 from Esencia Rural, a very fresh, lemony sparkler from Toledo. Read more about it here.
A delightful habit of the wine bars is when the waiter gives you a couple of sips, before you decide which wine you want in your glass. Here my waiter Ilan poured three samples. One of them Soif du Mal Blanc 2020, a muscat-dominated wine from Les Foulards Rouges, over the French border. I chose to wait until some other time, and go for a Castilian wine. Palote 2020 from Microbodega Rodríguez Morán in the province of Salamanca was made from palomino grapes. It rested one week with skins and stems. Thereafter it was aged in clay, finally bottled unfined, unfiltered and without sulphur. The colour was light orange/amber, slightly turbid; nice aroma of yellow fruit, elderberry, flowers and a touch of figs; good acidity, it plays with bitterness, but it’s restrained. A blue cheese accompaned these first wines, and it went surprisingly well.
Behind Artesano Vintners is Mike Shepherd, who has a past in Australia in two important natural wine houses. Now in Catunya he grows only 2 hectares. Parellatxa 2020 is a clarete: Pale red; vibrant fruit, raspberry; very light delicate touch of tannin. The name is put together by the varieties parellada and garnatxa, but this you have already figured out.
Ilan Saltzman (originally from Canada), wine responsible, serving the Kikiriki
Kikiriki 2018 is made from ull de llebre (tempranillo) and carinyena in a vineyard from 1979, by Manel Aviñó of Clos Lentiscus, Penedès. He works employing biodynamic techniques and ferment the grapes by variety before assembling the wines. Dark cherry colour; blueberry, also lighter fruit (raspberry) and a touch licorice; juicy with light tannin, good acidity, and over all truly fascinating.
Nacho González makes his wines within Valdeorras. But he is not a member of the DO, thus his La Perdida wines carry the designation Vinos de España. A Mallada 2020 is made from sumoll and garnacha tintorera. Fermented in amphora, aged in old oak, bottled without sulphites. It’s dark, quite complex; on the nose it displays something sweet and sour (sweet cherries, acidic berry stones?) and very fresh fruit; there is a young dryness in the mouth, lovely acidity.
About the second visit I will report very briefly. It went more or less like the first visit. The two absolutely brilliant wines were Jordi Llorens‘ Ancestral de la Cristina and Oriol Artigas‘ El Rall, both from Catalunya, both from 2019. The former is from the Conca de Barberà area in the province of Tarragona and lived up to normal standard, light yellow with its clean appley and mature lemony easy-going character. The latter I didn’t know. It’s a sumoll (the grape) from DO Alella, north of Barcelona city, and showed a cherry-dominated red fruits side, with a pleasant juicyness in the mouth. The best of the rest, and a surprise too, was Sin Prisa 2018, a forest fruits-coffee-scented monastrell without added sulphites from Bodegas De Fábula, Murcia, near the regional capital.
Below: Only two of the many international cuisine restaurants in the San Fernando market.
Just before leaving Spain this time I had the chance to visit the wonderful wine bar-restaurant Angelita Madrid just off the Gran Vía. This is an all time favourite, but I realized that this post is the only one on these pages so far. They have a bodega with more than 500 references, and always some 50 on offer by the glass. Add to this a high level kitchen, moderate prices and a highly competent staff, and you understand that the place is recommended.
This time I started with an albariño from Meaño, Rías Baixas, Galicia. Altos de Cristimil 2018, from the bodega of the same name. It showed a light yellow colour with greenish tones; aroma of yellow apples, flowers and with a certain lees character; quite slender in the mouth, with a good acidity, a bit almondy and with a salty finish. Very appealing.
Tomatoes of the variety “corazón de buey” (bull’s heart), oil and salt, bread with the albariño and the Alella
La Flamenca 2018 is a new project of Mario Rovira, of bodega Akilia in Bierzo. This is however in Alella, Catalunya, just north of Barcelona. It was listed under skin-contact wines, but the contact is limited with only five days of maceration with skins and two more days in spontanous fermentation after pressing – thus the light colour. 2018 is his first vintage here. Macabeu and pansa blanca are grown near the sea in granite soil. Aging was in ceramic egg, manzanilla barrel and steel tank. I would say the colour is light straw; a fine and discreet aroma with white flowers and lime; lightly textured, just a hint of peel, and with a salty finish. Really cool.
I tried Massuria 2009, a specialty in that it’s a developed red Bierzo wine. This dish however, called for something fresher. Guímaro Finca Meixemán 2017(Pedro Manuel Rodríguez) could provide that. It’s a single plot wine from the middle of a hill in the Amandi subregion of Ribeira Sacra. Dark colour with violet hints; despite a hot vintage the aroma is quite cool, with red berries and some balsamic, or herby, notes; super fruit in the mouth, a natural, integrated acidity, and just the faintest touch of barrel.
Valderiz 2016 was also tried, and is not bad at all. But I had already selected the Yotuel Selección 2015. The family bodega Gallego Zapatero is one of three in Ribera del Duero that Alsatian winemaker Sophie Kuhn was in charge of before she left a couple of years ago. From nine hectares in Anguix, Burgos province, they have a selection of wines, some of them single-plot wines. This is the quality between the entry-level wine and the single vineyard wines. It’s a varietal tinta del país (tempranillo) from two plots, both with more than sixty year old vines in bush training, grown in mainly clay and sandy soil. 2015 was a hot year with a short growth cycle. Fermentation was carried out in inox and concrete, and the 14 month ageing in French oak and concrete. Dark red with violet hints; aroma of forest fruits (blackberry), herbs (mint, rosemary) and pepper and some coffee,; it’s a potent wine, but the tannins are not overwhelming, and it has a good balance between the richness and the acidity, a hint of toast, and stylish in spite of 14%.
