Press "Enter" to skip to content

Category: Wine of the Week

Wine of the Week

White contrasts

Rita Marques is one of the new Douro comets. She has some terrific reds, such as a very personal take on the red bastardo variety, and some good ports too. But it’s maybe the whites that most of all cought my attention from the beginning, with their purity, freshness and elegance.

She is found by the Teja river, a tributary to the Douro that ends near Symington’s Vesúvio estate.

This wine is made from very old vines, primarily of the rabigato and côdega do larinho varieties (40% each), with arinto.

The must was spontaneously fermented and raised in inox tanks and used oak, with 5 months on the lees. It clocks in at a mere 13% alcohol.

Contraste Branco 2016 (Conceito Vinhos)

Light yellow, greenish hue. Flowery aroma, slightly waxy, with peaches and pears, and herbs underneath. Full on the palate, a salty minerality and with a limey acidity in a long aftertaste.

Price: Low

Food: Grilled seafood, white fish, some bacalhau dishes, salads

Leave a Comment

Wine of the Week

Bargain from the “Tierra” of Cuenca

In the Cuenca province, along the road between Madrid and Albacete, we find Dominio de Punctum. When we visited some years ago the Fernández family already impressed with splendid value wines from rather young vines. The quality is steadily improving since then.

Their production comes from their own vineyards, the “Finca Fabián” estate that currently includes more than 200 hectares. Here they have always worked in a traditional organic way, now biodynamic practises mark a further step.

 Visit in the vineyard

This wine, with the denomination Tierra de Castilla, is made from tempranillo 70%, complemented with petit verdot. As many will know, tempranillo is the prevailing Spanish grape, earlier called cencibel here (a fact people seem to have forgotten). Petit verdot is known from Bordeaux, but has long become a classic in Spain. Harvest was done at night, fermentation with natural yeasts carried out in inox between 24º and 27º C, and finally the wine was only lightly filtered.

Dominio de Punctum Tempranillo-Petit verdot 2016 (Dom. de Punctum)

Cherry red with violet rim. Notes of red berries, some blackberry and herbs. Tasty, with rounded tannins, and quite persistent.

Price: Low

Food: Light meat, salads, pasta, hard cheeses (such as the local manchego), assorted tapas

Leave a Comment

Wine of the Week

A day for Tempranillo

It seems to be a day for everything. Since 2011 the TAPAS (‘tempranillo advocates, producers and amigos society’) of North America has celebrated this grape, the world’s 4th in extension.

They picked the second Thursday in November, which means the coming 9th November this year. And many of the grape’s many international followers have – followed.

I miss no opportunity to open a bottle of tempranillo wine. They come in many variations, different clones and synonyms too (more than 60 in its native Spain alone), but one clone has the ability to show huge differences in terroir.

Needless to say, there are a huge amount of wines to chose from. I select one from my most recent wine trip, that included one day in Rioja. Here Sandra Bravo has released some magnificent and original wines since 2012. The clayey/chalky vineyards are found at 650 meters altitude between Labastida and the Sierra de Toloño (a part of the Cantabrian mountain range). The wines are kept in a rented bodega in Villabuena de Álava – all this to the east-northeast of Haro, for those who are not quite familiar with the landscape.

 

Sandra Bravo in the Villabuena cellar

The wine in question is her “basic” red. It was in fact the first wine in Rioja to be elevated in clay amphora. There are now several vintages on the market. I chose 2014 as I think it has a perfect development right now, though it will keep. The cultivation is organic, the must was fermented with natural yeasts in steel, clay and cement, and it spent some 6 months in used French oak barrels.

Bilderesultat for sierra de toloño 2014

Sierra de Toloño 2014 (Sierra de Toloño)

Dark cherry red. Floral, cool fruit, with red berries (cherry, blackberry), herbs, and a slight dark (roasted, coffee) tone. Very elegant, quite slender, with appealing acidity and developing tannins.

Price: Medium

Food: Red and light meat, game, salads, light stews, hard cheeses

Leave a Comment

Wine of the Week

Value Valpolicella

This is a very good value Valpolicella. The winery is established in an aristocratic villa from the 16th century, and has a beautiful agriturismo on the estate. The estate totals 400 hectares, including three vineyards on three different hills, with differences in soil composition and orientation.

This wine comes from the Monte del Drago hill, with a total vineyard area of 8 hectares. There are also some young (white) garganega and pinot bianco plantings, but the vines that gives the fruit to the Drago wine is mainly corvina planted in the 1990’s. The exposition is west, and the soil is tuff with white clay.  

The grapes are organically cultivated, and biodynamic techniques are also employed. Corvina makes up the highest proportion of the blend (60%), the rest corvinone, and 5% each of rondinella and, maybe a surprise: barbera. Winemaker Maddalena Pasqua let it rest for 12 months in French oak, which is barely noticeable.

 

7401901-1

Drago Valpolicella Superiore 2015 (Musella)

Quite dark red, blueish hint. Aroma of dark and red berries (cherry), some herbs. Young, lucious, tasty and with a fresh acidity.

Price: Low

Food: Light meat, pasta, salads, antipasti

Leave a Comment

Wine bars and restaurants and Wine of the Week

Mengoba at Gastroteca de Santiago

This marked the conclusion of a wine trip. Our theme was three wine regions in old Castilla. But we also had some occasional wines from other areas.

The Gastroteca is a wine bar, or restaurant, in a small chain of restaurants and a shop. It’s run by a handful of sommeliers. Tabernero and Matritum are other Madrid wine bars in the chain, and the one with special responsabililty for this place is Juan Carlos Ramos. The restaurant is located on the Plazuela de Santiago, close to the royal palace, and not far from the central tourist spot Puerta del Sol.

The Gastroteca de Santiago is a small restaurant, or wine bar, with only 16 chairs. It has a creative menu that could be described as contemporary Spanish, and the dishes are delivered cleverly and at very reasonable prices. The wine list is quite extensive with a focus on what’s happening in Spain at the moment, and with a nod to classic European regions as well, most of all Burgundy, Rhône and Champagne.

gastro_calle320

We had a wonderful unfiltered fino Arroyuelo from producer Primitivo Collantes, a verdejo from Rueda (Tinita 2014 from Soto y Manrique), 25% of it with fermentation and 4 months lees-ageing in oak. Then we chose the unique Monastel from Rioja’s Juan Carlos Sancha (which we will presented in a later post).

20171016_103505

Enjoying a good red at the Gastroteca

We closed our session with a wonderful wine from Gregory Pérez of Bierzo, the Castilian region to the north-west bordering Galicia. Gregory, originally from Bordeaux, fell in love with Bierzo, and at a time he worked with Mariano García (of Vega Sicilia fame) at Luna Beberide, another Bierzo winery. He works very traditionally, with natural methods, including native yeasts, very low sulphur – and with a horse. Mengoba is a series of wines, the name made up of the first letters of the local varieties mencía, godello and valenciana with a “b”).

This Mengoba is made from mencía 80%, and the rest garnacha tintorera, also known as the Portuguese alicante bouschet. The mencía is sourced partly from a clone that Gregory revived in Espanillo, at 700-850 meters with mixed soils (80 year old vines) and the rest from 550 meters at Valtuille (30 year old). It stayed 6 months on lees in big foudres, partly with whole clusters. Then in 5.000 liters in the foudres for almost 10 months.

20171016_103934

Mengoba 2015 (Gregory Pérez)

Dark red. Aromas of dark fruit, ink, and plums, a little chocolate. Full on the palate, young tannins and good acidity. With a couple of years more it will probably have reached its full potential, with everything integrated and still packed with lively fruit.

Price: Medium

 

 

Leave a Comment

Wine of the Week

Nieva, a new chapter

Nieva is a small settlement of some 300 souls in the Segovia province, at the southeastern border of DO Rueda. It’s a cool and high area with predominantly sandy soils, so there are many un-grafted, pre-phylloxera vines, in Spanish called ‘pie franco’. These three factors make it a really interesting place.

Allow me a brief Nieva quality wine history, which is all about the verdejo variety. Viñedos de Nieva was the leading producer here, with Pie Franco as one of the great Spanish whites. Then Ismael Gozalo, from Nieva, teamed up with Javier Zaccagnini (from Aalto with Mariano García, formerly Vega Sicilia) to form Ossian, that gave us the Capitel, a big wine, by many considered among the country’s best wines too. The Brothers Herrero, that we will visit tomorrow, left Viñedos de Nieva when the Martúe group took over. When Zaccagnini sold his part of Ossian to Pago de Carraovejas, Ismael went solo. Now folks, I will not bore you any more with tales of who leaves who.

Ismael works according to nature’s laws, and tries to express the terroir. He uses the old bodega of an old Nieva monastery. He makes a variety of wines, some more on the experimental natural side than others. 

20171009_202641

Rack is a verdejo from pre-phylloxera vines, and organically certified. It’s fermented in steel tanks with natural yeasts, aimed to be reductive and thus self-protective. (The back label says ‘beautiful reduction taken to the extreme’.) It’s bottled without added sulphites, un-filtered and without corrections of any sort. Only 650 bottles were made.

Rack 2015 (Ismael Gozalo, MicroBio)

Deep yellow, cloudy. Aroma of white flowers, peach, mature apples. Opulent in the mouth, with small bubbles, and a fresh acidity that knits it nicely together.

Price: Medium

Leave a Comment

Wine of the Week

Summer in South Tyrol

This is a müller thurgau from Italy. It’s not as strange as it sounds. The region bordering Austria, not far from Germany either, has been influenced by both these countries through its Austrian-Hungarian past.

It was surprisingly good though, from a grape variety that we didn’t knew for quality (deservedly right or maybe rather not).

Eisacktal is the German name of the Valle Isarco that runs into the Etsch, or Adige, Italy’s second longest river (that later runs through Verona and out in the Adriatic).

It’s here that cellar master Andrea Huber brings out the one wine better than the other from the 8 hectares of vineyard. They are dry, pure and with a minerality that expresses the land.

Pacherhof (credit: Pacherhof)

Müller Thurgau Brixner Eisacktaler 2016 (Pacherhof)

Light straw colour. Fruity, green apples, some pears, white flowers. Round mouthfeel, luscious, just enough acidity. Elegant.

Price: Medium

 

Leave a Comment

Wine of the Week

Quinta das Bágeiras: As traditional as they come in Bairrada

I have recently been in Bairrada visiting some of the best producers. While I am working on a longer piece (and have indeed finished one for the Norwegian magazine Vinforum) I here give you another wine as our Wine of the Week. Last time I talked about the project of Dirk Niepoort, that together with Filipa Pato can be called the leading “modernist” producers, at least in the subtle, low-alcohol, low-extraction style. Compared to these, Mário Sérgio Alves Nuno can be dubbed “traditionalist”. But they are all “Baga Friends” (as the name of their group suggests), and I would say that the similarities overshadow the differences.

Quinta das Bágeiras produces wine from own vineyards at Fogueira, in northern Bairrada. Fogueira means something like bonfire in Portuguese, and you may have seen the flame on the labels. Mário Sérgio leads the family firm, and his son Frederico is now under education in enology. Winemaker Rui Alves (a defender of traditional expertise) and other good helpers have been with him for many years.

2017-08-31 16.24.52 - Mário Sérgio Alves Nuno og sønnen Frederico Nuno Mário Sérgio and Frederico Nuno

The vineyards are treated in a natural way, without spraying and fertilizing, no yeasts are added, there is whole-bunch fermentation, foot-trodding in lagares of cement, and ageing on big wooden vats.

Mário Sérgio has always convinced us with the qualities of his colheitas, reservas and garrafeiras, both red and white. Quite recently he has expanded his portfolio with wines called Pai Abel (a hommage to his father, wines from a single vineyard on clay and limestone by Ancas, close to Fogueira) and Avô Fausto, a nod to his grandfather, who established the first vineyards).

I was tempted to chose his Super Reserva Rosé 2011, a super rosé with 12 months skin-contact and five years on the lees, a complex, tasty, herby sparkler. But the red bagas are the most prominent wines throughout the quinta’s history, and we end up with the Garrafeira 2005. It is approaching its peak (where these wines can stay for a long time).

bageiras

Quinta das Bágeiras Garrafeira 2005

Dark, deep, showing beginning development. Super berry fruit (cherry, morello), but also some coffee and earthy, darker aromas. And here are enough tannins and acidity for a long life. Power and finesse!

Price: Medium

 

Leave a Comment

Wine of the Week

Happy Grenache Day!

No it’s not Mother’s Day, not my name day (probably not yours), and no king or queen I know about was born on this day (you don’t need to notify me if you happen to know one). An American group has in fact dubbed it National Double Cheese Burger Day, but that we must cover some other time. Ladies and gentlemen: It’s the International Grenache Day again!

A new opportunity to celebrate that wonderful grape: Light in colour, fleshy, low in tannin, high in alcohol… Some years ago it was very un-fashionable. But times they are a-changing. Now it’s gaining ground even compared to tempranillo in Rioja.

Some have learned to tame this grape, and to make the best of it. This blog is full of garnachas, just push the green garnacha button to the right (try grenache too), and you will see.

IMG_4190 Dani and Fernando Dani (left) and Fernando

Pick of the day: Fernando García and Dani Landi’s Comando G (that in this case stands for garnacha). What could be better? In the Sierra de Gredos they use low yields, natural fermentation, low extraction (but long maceration), no additions, 5 months in big vats, no filtration nor fining… This is pure garnacha elegance, and the most direct expression of place that you can think of.

La Bruja de Rozas is made from several plots in and around Las Rozas de Puerto Real, in the (Madrid) province of the Gredos mountains. The soils are granitic.

Comando G_Rozas

La Bruja de Rozas 2015 (Comando G)

Light cherry red. Lively perfumed fruit, raspberry, white flowers. A “dancing” acidity that forms a fine structure together with a touch of tannin. Light, pure, expressive. Don’t ask for more!

Price: Don’t care (all right, luckily it falls into our medium category, less than 20€ at Spanish Vila Viniteca or Lavinia, less than £20 at Swig and similar, UK, and 235 NKR at Vinmonopolet, Norway)

 

Leave a Comment

Wine of the Week

Vino de Paraje… de Bierzo

This is not primarily a political blog. But while waiting for next move from big Spanish wine locomotive Rioja I was delighted when Bierzo announced exactly what I hoped for from the big brother. That is a new classification based on the “Burgundy model”, a project that Priorat had also embarked on, and is about to fulfill.

20170909_085908

Moncerbal is one of four parajes (places) from this producer in the villa of Corullón

In brief, Bierzo has launched a four category classification where paraje (vineyard, or: place) is the most specific, and villa (village) the next level.

This wine is a 100% mencía from a vineyard of 1,74 hectars between 60 and 90 years old in the “paraje” of Moncerbal in the village Corullón situated between 610 and 730 meters’ altitude.

The alcoholic fermentation was carried out in open wooden vats with a 48 days maceration. Spontaneous malo-lactic in big wood too, before 19 months in new French oak.

20170909_085653

Moncerbal 2009 (Descendientes de J. Palacios)

Deep red (crimson). Aromas of cherries, plums, eucalyptus, and only a slight hint of tobacco and chocolate. Full on the palate, fruit with both sunny and cool elements, good acidity. Nice concentration. Good with food now, but will keep for many years.

Note: Some find this wine at its peak now. I prefer a few years more in the cellar. We may “sacrifice” some fresh fruit, but the integration of the wood will be complete.

Serve lightly chilled, just enough to keep the alcohol (14,5) in check.

Price: High

Food: Red meat, game, stews, pasta…

Leave a Comment