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Tag: Spain

Articles and Wine bars and restaurants

Bravo revisited

Bravo is located in the increasingly popular eastern district of Stavanger. We have visited a couple of times in the past. Bravo can be characterized as a wine bar, or informal restaurant, with small but elaborate plates at very affordable prices. They offer around 15 wines by the glass, all good and inspiring, as well as a full list of wines by the bottle. The profile is natural, sustainably produced wines with a terroir character.

From the small dishes and snacks menu, this time we chose (European) hake, yellow beetroot, pork rillettes and braised sirloin, and also a bowl of green olives.

The first wine was a sort of entry-level wine from Alberto Nanclares and Silvia Prieto, one of the leading producers in Galicia’s Rías Baixas. I didn’t take many notes, so the following is mostly based on memory. Dandelión 2022, a varietal albariño, appeared as grape-fresh as usual. Light golden in colour, aroma of yellow apple, lime and stone minerals. It has the typical glyceric full-bodied albariño character, good fruit in the mouth, great acidity and finishes dry.

Hake with sea buckthorn, quinoa, cucumber and spring onion – accompanied by the albariño

We had a superb German wine, Karl May’s Osthofen Pinot Noir 2020, with yellow beetroot and even the pork rillettes. The winery has been in the family since 1815. Today it’s Peter and Fritz from the 7th generation who manage the family winery in Rheinhessen. Ruby red, and what a lovely red fruits nose, dominated by raspberry. Just behind there is cherry and a slightly earthy note. Juicy in the mouth with delicate tannin and an inspiring acidity.

Frances Grimalt of 4 Kilos is one of the leading wine personalities on Mallorca, and a torchbearer for the revolution of the variety callet, maybe the most emblematic grape on the island. Here it’s the mantonegro (also spelled manto negro), that’s playing the key role, with a small percentage syrah. Mantonegro typically gives a light colour and high alcohol to a blend. Gallinas y Focas, here in the 2019 vintage is made in collaboration with an organisation for mentally handicapped. It’s a wine with some volume and enough power to go with the braised meat. Cherry red, warm and developed aroma of red and dark fruits, with some spice.

Braised sirloin with Gallinas y Focas

To round off we had two wines, the Stolpman Vineyards‘ white Uni and Schödl‘s skin contact wine called Bloody Muscat.

Stolpman is found in Ballard Canyon, California. The wine Uni 2021 is made from roussanne 70%, and chardonnay 30%. It’s light yellow with green hints, smells of ripe pear, citrus and white flowers. It’s a wine with good volume and adequate acidity.

Schödl is located in Loidesthal, Weinviertel, just norti of Wien. Their Bloody Muscat 2023 wonderfully rounded off our meal. It’s a wine from roter muskateller grapes, that gives it a.special colour to the wine. The grapes macerated about two weeks on the skins. After fermentation the wine went into big oak casks. Bottled without filtration and fining. Deep golden with a reddish hint, slightly turbid. Aroma of orange peel, white flowers, herbs and ethereal oils. Smooth tannins and good acidity, rounded. It’s in a way serious, but it’s also fresh and fun.

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Wine of the Week

Dry PX

Ximénez-Spínola is a rare bird in the fauna jerezana, in that they are focusing on a single grape, the pedro ximénez, or simply PX.

This week’s wine is a dry take on what’s normally, in this region, elaborated as a sweet wine. It’s made from grapes that are overripe, the producer counts 21 additional days to the conventional harvest. The grapes are harvested by hand, then pressed softly,. The wine is placed with its skins in French oak barrels of between 225 and 300 liters, adding 30 liters to each barrel every day – hence the name, that means slow fermentation – so that the yeasts can finish off all the sugars daily and leave the wine completely dry. The musts are aged on lees with a gentle batonage for six months in the barrel.

Fermentación Lenta 2019 (Ximénez-Spínola)

Light golden with greenish hint, high viscosity. Aroma of dried plums, wax, hint of caramel. Full in the mouth, glyceric, with figs, ripe fruit and a sweet touch like caramel, but rounds off dry. A unique wine with lots of personality.

Price: Medium/high

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Wine of the Week

Lumière, a brilliant white

This is the second article in a series of three, about unfortified wines from the sherry district. This white table wine is just brilliant. It’s a palomino without additions, not even any influence of flor. It’s a sublime expression of grape and place.

Alejandro Muchada and his partner David Léclapart make incredible terroir-driven wines full of saline minerality, and always with a lovely texture. From three plots of a total of 3.6 hectares in Sanlúcar de Barrameda, Alejandro works according to biodynamic principles, and in the cellar he shows a hands-off philosophy..

The grapes for this wine is taken from Viña La Platera Vieja in Miraflores Baja, that is a 1.2 hectares plot. The soil is calcareous albariza, with a hard rock albariza type called “tosca cerrada”, under clayey limestone. The orientation is west and the vines are more than 60 years old.

The grapes were hand-harvested, directly pressed for 3-4 hours, spontaneously fermented and matured for 12 months on lees in used barrels. Bottled without filtering.

Lumière 2021 (Muchada-Léclapart)

Yellow colour, slightly cloudy. Aroma of yellow apples, flowers, almonds, black olives and citrus and a touch of salt. Concentrated, medium-bodied, fruity in the mouth with almonds, smooth texture, mineral. Finishes very long. It has this extra nerve that is hard to define, but makes it a great wine. As the name might imply: Brilliant.

Price: High

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Wine of the Week

Palatable Pasto

Vino de pasto is a table wine, here as opposed to a fortified sherry. The word is probably from the same root as pasture.

But first a brief history. The Pérez family have been winemakers for several generations. In 2002 Luis, a professor of oenology and former winemaker at Domecq, set up his bodega just outside Jerez, together with his children. Most significantly, his son Willy has made his name as a brilliant winemaker that takes the sherry trade in new and interesting directions.

One of their main objective is exploring the historic pagos (vineyards) of Jerez. This wine La Escribana is made of palomino fino grapes grown on Cerro de Obispo, a hill in the pago Macharnudo, on albariza (limestone) soil. This south-east facing plot, approximately 100 metres above sea level, is pruned in the local vara y pulgar pruning method (means stick and thumb, and has some similarity to Guyot). Picking is done twice; early for acidity, then later for more maturity. After a 5-6 hours asoleo (drying) and cold fermentation in steel, it undergoes 12 months of ageing on the lees with a little flor, in 80 years old sherry butts.

This review is the first of a “triangle” of unfortified wines from the sherry area.

La Escribana 2022 (Luis Pérez)

Light yellow. Notes of citrus (lemon peel), green apples, flowers, chalk, and a light yeast character. Full in the mouth, fresh, good acidity, some grapefruity bitterness and a marked saltiness.

Price: Medium

Food: We had it with bacalao, but should go to a variety of tasty fish and light meat dishes, as well as various tapas.

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Palo Cortado with personality

This wine was served in a panel tasting of dry sherries for Vinforum magazine.

Bodegas Ximénez-Spínola has since 1729 built its reputation on a single grape variety, namely pedro ximénez, that has always found itself in the shadow of palomino. The current proprietor is José Antonio Zarzana.

Their vineyards between the towns of Jerez, Sanlúcar de Barrameda and El Puerto de Santa María have chalky chalky albariza soils and are worked organically.

The wine is put together from single vintage casks from 2009, ’13, ’15 and ’19, blended together in 9 new barrels, matured for a year and then bottled. Fermentation was in French oak with wild yeasts, followed by ageing in American oak with some casks developing flor, whilst some not, giving complexity from both biological and oxidative ageing. There has been no fortification. Still it carries the DO Jerez-Xérès-Sherry, thanks to the new regulations from 2022. Alcoholic fermentation brought it up to15%, then an oxidative ageing and evaporation, resulted in a final 17%.

Palo Cortado Jerez Seco Serie 2 (Ximénez-Spínola)

Beautiful amber colour. Smells of apricot, candied fruits, and lightly fried onions. It’s full and glyceric, in a way fruity, with a saline touch, grapey, long with a nutty finish, and with perfectly integrated alcohol. A complex and generous wine, with lots of personality. Truly memorable.

Price: High

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Wine of the Week

Remarkable Ribeiro

I visited Luis Anxo Rodríguez Vázquez back 15 years ago or so, and tasted the whole range. I remember well some impressive aged wines. From time to time one stumbles over his wines. This one I found in a shop in Murcia.

Luis concentrates on indigenous grape varieties like treixadura, brancellao and caiño. Today he works 6 hectares in Arnoia, in the DO Ribeiro, comprised of nearly 180 micro-parcels, located on southwestfacing, granitic hillsides. He utilizes native yeasts, low SO2, and practices élevage in steel tank, foudre and mostly used, larger French oak barrels.

The grapes varieties are treixadura, albariño, lado and torrontés. The soils are decomposit granite (called sábrego) with silicium, and the vines up to 25 years old. The grapes were hand-harvested, destemmed and fermented with native yeasts in steel vats, and raised for 10-12 months on lees before bottling with a light clarification (bentonite) and filtration.

Viña de Martín Os Pasás 2021 (Luis Anxo Rodríguez Vázquez)

Light straw-coloured. Fresh aroma of citrus, herbs, quince and balsamic. Medium-bodied with fresh acidity and good power, and a salty mineral finish. The wine just is there, always, without hitting the headlines. But it’s just remarkable.

Price: Medium

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Wine of the Week

Fresh Aire

The last few days have been bakingly hot in Central Spain. So some freshness was needed. I finally got the opportunity to visit my friend Samuel Cano in Mota del Cuervo, Cuenta province. You can read about several of his wines elsewhere on the blog, such as here and here.

We visited La Tarancona vineyard. It sits on clay-calcareous soil at 800 meters elevation, and the vines have an average age of 70 years. The harvest was done at the end of September, after a rainy spring and a very long and hot summer. The grapes were destemmed and placed in a stainless steel tank, where it macerated for 5 days and began the alcoholic fermentation. It was then  passed to a cement tank to finish fermenting and aged on the lees until bottling in March without filtration or stabilization.

Aire en el Patio La Tarancona 2023 (Vinos Patio)

Light golden colour. Yellow apples, mature lime, wax. Juicy with a light dryness, tasty, with a fresh acidity and a saline finish.

Price: Medium

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Wine of the Week

Tinácula from tinajas

I have just come back to Murcia after a few days in Castilla-La Mancha and Madrid. One of the highlights of the trip was a visit to Las Calzadas in Pozoamargo, in the DO Ribera del Júcar.

Daniel Sevilla hosted me, with his girlfriend Raquel and his father José Julián. They showed me around their different vineyards, gave me a tasting of an excellent range of clay jars aged wines and even offered a delicious lunch with lechazo (young lamb), the local manchego cheese and so forth.

Daniel and José Julián

Moreover, this was also a trip down memory lane. Some years ago I visited José Miguel Jávega, who is the cousin of Daniel’s father. José Miguel was director of the Casa Gualda cooperative, that I happened to collaborate with at the time. He supported me this time via social media, and suggested that i gave this wine a try. So I did, and we also visited the same chapel as many years ago and saw the same old Roman roads, the Calzadas, that gave the name to this new company.

The wine is made exclusively with pardilla, a local low-yielding grape that has practically disappeared. I was more common in the Pozoamargo area before. Las Calzadas is involved in a recovery process for the variety. The soil is calcareous clay with a layer of rounded pebbles, typical of the banks of the Júcar river.

The grapes were destemmed and there was skin contact for 12 hours. After manual pressing it settled in a jar. The juice fermented in more than 100 years old clay jars, then aged 4 months on lees in the same jars. The wine was bottled without filtering or clarifying.

Tinácula Blanco 2023 (Las Calzadas)

Light golden colour. Deep and complex aroma of yellow apples, white flowers, wax and citrus peel. Unctuous in the mouth, creamy with good acidity and a saline finish.

Price: Medium

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Wine of the Week

Great white Godello

Verónica Ortega has been featured on this blog several times. Here is a bit of background.

Tormenta is a new wine beginning with the 2021 vintage, that has taken over from the fabulous Cal from the same municipality. I tasted this wine in a wine club tonight where my topic was The New Spain, illustrated by ten wines.

We are in the Bierzo area. 0.8 hectares of godello grapes are grown organically in a paraje called Garbanzal in the village San Juan de la Mata, north in the appellation. The vineyard is more than 25 years old on and sits on clay and calcareous soils, at 650 meters altitude. The grapes were harvested manually, destemmed and experienced a night’s cold maceration. The fermentation was spontaneous from native yeasts. It was completed after thirteen months in barrels and amphorae.

Tormenta 2021 (Verónica Ortega)

Light yellow colour. Floral scent with yellow apples, peaches and a hint of sultanas. Delicate in the mouth, dancing between dryness and softness, tasty with a lively acidity, and a marked minerality. It tends towards some sharpness, but this is just held back. A great wine

Price: High

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Wine of the Week

Alternative Ribera

Pablo and Andrea of Magna Vides offer an alternative to the many oaky and heavy reds of Ribera del Duero. At their estate in La Aguilera (Burgos) they work eco-friendly in every possible way. This wine is made from garnacha grapes from 90 year old vines on sandy loam soils. They are fermented with stems and with local yeasts. It’s aged 12 months in used French barrels.

Alma de Cántaro Garnacha Tinta 2020 (Magna Vides)

Dark cherry red. Fresh aroma of raspberry, wild strawberries, plums and herbs. Clear and focused garnacha fruit on the palate, it’s juicy with timid tannins, and a fresh and lively fruit. It’s carefully extracted and with no disturbing wood influence.

Price: Medium

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