Cakana has been featured before. Here you can read some background information.
Torrontés de Maceración Prolongada 2022 (Chakana)
Yellow, cloudy. Aromatic with citrus, apricot, candied fruit, menthol and flowers. Full in the mouth, fruity, a refreshing acidity and a long finish. Full of taste and character.
Price: Low/medium
Leave a CommentThis is a wine with great value, typical of its land and grape variety. The Bianchi-Bernetti family, the owner of the Umani Ronchi label, has been into winemaking since 1957. They started in Marque with verdicchio. Today they operate in three Italian wine regions.
The montepulciano grapes in Abruzzo are trained in the pergola system. Montipagano is a single-varietal Montepulciano from organic cultivation.
Montepulciano d’Abruzzo Montipagano 2021 (Umani Ronchi)
Violet colour. Black fruits (blackberry), plums, white flowers with herbs and earthy tones. Medium-bodied, rounded young tannins, fresh fruit and a pleasant acidity.
Price: Low
Leave a CommentI say Toro, because wine lovers will know where it is. The wine is given the more generic designation Castilla y León though, but the label gives the exact address and also shows the coordinates.
we are in the southern village of El Pego, where Álvar de Dios Hernández took over his grandfather’s century-old vineyards in 2008.
Vagüera comes from a single vineyard in El Maderal further north. It sits 950 metres above sea level and surrounded by an extensive cork oak forest that shields the vines from the sun. It’s made from doña blanca grapes planted in the 1920s. They were direct-pressed, barrel-fermented and aged at least 12 months in the same barrels. The wine is neither filtered nor clarified.
Vagüera 2018 (Álvar de Dios)
Light yellow with green hints. Intense aroma with citrus (lime), green apples, white flowers. Tasty, with good volume and concentration, a refreshing acidity and good length. It’s direct, but it has also a deeper layer. No oakiness, except that it’s breathing well (from the microoxidation). Wonderful balance, and also ageing capacities.
Price: Medium
Leave a CommentOn the last day in Mallorca, 3rd January, I visited Carlos Rodríguez Furthmann in the small town of Selva. He is a veteran vigneron, but he does not own any vineyards, and for this project he buys all the grapes. This creates freedom, but in reality he says he continues to work with only the same few farmers.
The wine is made from gorgollassa, a red indigenous grape variety that Carlos calls his favourite. Elegant and subtle are two adjectives that he uses to describe it. One part of the wine was aged in 500-litre French oak barrels, another in a Mallorcan clay amphora and the remaining in stainless steel. Spontaneous fermentation. Nothing was added to the wine apart from a low dose of sulphites. It was not clarified or filtered.
Gargo 2019 (Selva Vins)
Ruby red. Red fruits (cherry, raspberry), herbs, blackthorn (endrina), a bit earthy. Light and fresh in the mouth, smooth tannins, a slight bitterness in the finish, everything well-balanced.
Price: Medium
Leave a CommentLa Chanin was presented by the sommelier of La Gracia bar in Murcia as a super cool orange wine. And it sure was. Orange wines can lack interest if they just have some extra skin-contact and miss the acidity to match. This one had the underlying concentration and excelled in electricity and vividness.
Silvia and Kike Srados started their Cható Gañán project in 2014. It was born out of the need to take care of and restore the respect for the old garnacha and albillo vines of Cebreros, where the whole family lives. This is a way to honour all those farmers and peasants -gañanes- who have preserved the exceptional old vineyards that the bodega can now enjoy and work with.
The wine is made of albillo real grapes from a century-old vineyard, at about 780 meters of altitude, with granite soil and a large presence of quartz. It is completely destemmed and left with skins for approximately three weeks. Spontaneous fermentation starts with native yeasts. It is made in stainless steel and lees are stirred for five months. It is also aged for five months in French barrels of various uses. Natural stabilization was secured by the cold. The wine is not clarified or filtered. Just a minimal dose of added sulfur. Bottled, labeled and sealed by hand.
La Chanin 2020 (Cható Gañán)
Deep golden colour, almost amber. Mature apples, apricots, yeast, iodine and a touch of honey. Full on the palate, good concentration, slight tannin, and the acidity contributes to an electric, vivid sensation. A slight bitterness towards the end. It hints to an amontillado too, and surely has a great personality
Price: Medium
Leave a CommentHere is a Bullas wine once introduced te me by La Gracia, a fabulous natural wine bar in the centre of Murcia. It does not bear the official seal though. I’ll investigate on that one day.
María José Fernández Llamas and Patri Morillo are its makers. It comes from monastrell and garnacha tintorera, with ages ranging between 8 and 50 years. The clusters are trodden with intact stems. Alcoholic fermentation is controlled below 25º. The soils consist of clay and calcareous clay textures, deep and rich.
Negrete 2021 (Negre-T Blue Wines)
Deep purple. Attractive and seductive aromas of mature fruits, herbs. Full and juicy in the mouth, with gentle tannins and a pleasant acidity. Easy fruit-driven drinking.
Price: Low
Leave a CommentI was given a sample of this wine as part of a blind tasting game. Admittedly I was quite good this time, and went directly to the right wine style, main grape and country. This one can do only when it’s a good wine, and true to its origins. Luck had it that I had already opened a panettone, Italian christmas cake, and it turned out a fabulous pairing.
Stellenrust was established in 1928 and is now among the largest family wineries in Stellenbosch. They harvest from nearly 400ha of vineyards surrounding the town. They take pride in various socio-economic projects, especially for the people working by them – and are Fairtrade certified.
The wine is based on chenin blanc farmed as bush vines 50 of 50 years, and muscat d’alexandrie 70 years old and trellised. Selected botrytised grapes are pressed gently with some skin-contact, then spontaneously fermented in old wooden casks. Chenin and muscat are treated separately and blended after 12 months.
Chenin d’Muscat Noble Late Harvest 2021 (Stellenrust)
Light golden. Mature citrus (lemon), candied fruits (apricot), sultanas, flowers, evident botryuis and a touch of honey. Good volume, concentration and acidity, moderate sweetness, and the candied fruit returns in the mouth.
Price: Medium
Food: Perfect with my panettone (with pineapple, apricot and pistachios). Should go with lemon tart, creamy desserts, crème brûlée and much more.
Leave a CommentVasco Croft has been featured several times on these pages such as here, in a write-up from 2018. He is a pioneer in biodynamic wine farming since he established his Aphros wine series in 2003. He disposes of some 20 hectares in the Lima valley, in mostly granitic soil.
The loureiro vines are exposed to the south. Harvest between 10 and 15 September 2021 is followed by crushing of the grapes, destemming and pressing in an antique basket press. Fermentation of the must then takes place spontaneously in clay amphoras, that are sealed with beeswax to regulate oxidation. Ageing on lees went on for 6 months.
Oenologues are Miguel Viseu and Tiago Sampaio (read about his own Folias de Baco wines several places on this blog).
Phaunus Loureiro 2021 (Aphros)
Light golden, slightly cloudy. Aroma of citrus (lemon), orange peel, white flowers, on a background of tea and bergamot. Fresh on the palate, fine tannins, with abundant fruit, a touch of spice and grapefruit in the end. There is a very appealing lightness to the wine.
Price: Medium
Leave a CommentThere are many different dessert and fortified wines. This one is very little known, but I don’t understand why. It’s a moderately sweet wine that pairs well with typical Christmas fruit cakes like panettone and pandoro. The category is ratafia, elaborated throughout the Mediterranean, but this specific wine belongs to the sub-category Ratafia de Champagne (or: Champenois). It was my contribution to a blind tasting session in the local wine club, and one of the highlights of the evening.
The term “ratafia” can be used in about three different products; some may know the almond biscuit and the liqueur. The dessert wine has seen a solid upturn in recent years, and there are now at least 120 producers of ratafia in Champagne.
An anecdote explains that the name is supposed to have come from Catalunya, where three bishops are said to have argued fiercely, but finally reached an agreement. They wanted to celebrate this with a toast, and got some wine from a local farmer. As his drink had no name, they suggested “rata fiat” (Lat. ‘it is signed’), the last words of the document they had drawn up.
The wine is fortified, but it’s not marked by alcohol,. It’s fresh, and not overtly sweet. The basis are organically grown 1 cru chardonnay grapes from Montagne de Reims. They were manually harvested in october 2013. The alcoholic fermentation was blocked by adding distilled wine (marc). It was then aged for 7 years in wooden casks of 400 and 600 liters. The wine clocks in at 18% alcohol and 100 g sugar.
Vilmart & Cie is a récoltant-manipulant (RM) in Rilly-la-Montagne, just outside the city of Reims. They are now in their 5th generation and grow their grapes organically.
Ratafia Chardonnay (Vilmart)
Golden colour. Fresh aroma of mature lemons, candid apricots, menthol. Medium-bodied with good concentration, fresh acidity and a natural/integrated sweetness reminiscent of acacia honey. Great length and balance. Inspiring.
Price: Medium
Leave a CommentHere is a prime example of the “new” Rioja, made by Pedro Balda, one of the younger authorities in the field.
Pedro Balda is director of the research department of Vintae, a group that started in La Rioja, but has expanded to many Spanish areas. Pedro is himself from Sonsierra, and after workingr with many wineries of the world, such as Chile’s Viña Santa Cruz, the United States’ Marimar Estate, and New Zealand’s Dry River, he has brought his experience home to Spain.
He is also an academic, earning his doctorate in enology with a thesis discovering two minority varieties which had been recovered in Rioja and triumphing with the wines le makes from his family’s vineyards. He is the youngest doctor of enology in Spain, currently professor at the university of Logroño.
He started his personal project in 2008, in his native San Vicente de la Sonsierra. There Pedro works without the addition of sulphites in any of the points of the process. Nor are yeasts, bacteria or any other agent that can accelerate fermentations added. His way of working is simply to let everything happen naturally.
Pedro makes two wines. The most expensive one is Vendimia Seleccionada. This one is called Cosecha, a varietal tempranillo. In the selection priority is given to the smallest clusters with the most intense aromas. The grapes are always hand-harvested, but in the Cosecha they were mechanically destemmed. The extraction is light. He works in the most natural way possible, and no sulfites are added at any stage.
The label is a tribute to the land and his ancestors.
Cosecha 2016 (Pedro Balda)
Dark cherry red. Ripe aromas of black and red fruits (blackberry, cranberry), plums, flowers, ink and a mineral touch. Good volume and concentration, smooth tannins, light cocoa, and a long aftertaste.
Price: High
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