Wine Chords

Argentinian wine bar in La Latina

Published 8. March 2023 by Vidar Kenneth Johansen

Wine bar and restaurant Cedrón is located in the the La Latina neighborhood of Madrid, just behind the Plaza de la Cebada, with the famous market. It’s a warm and cosy locale from 1850, with wood, steel and stone. They have a wide variety of wines by the glass, some are natural wines, some just organic, and all are made by small family producers.

The owners are Argentinians, and both wine list and food menu has some influence from this. I ordered vitello tonnato, that is Italian origin, but very popular in Argentina. I completed with two more small dishes, a fresh burrata, and croquetas of cod, that turned out to be quite spicy. A complimentary starter was a humus de remolacha, accompanied by flatbread with herbs.

For the three platters I chose three wines. La Salada Disbarats 2021 is a simple but delicious white made by Toni Carbó, that has collaborated with Mas Candí in Penedès. The wine, from macabeu 80% and xarel.lo, is a light skin-contact white, slender, with aromas of citrus, flowers and a touch of orange peel, and with a saline finish.

La Traca 2020 (Risky Grapes) is a juicy, light structure bobal from València. The colour is ruby red, and the aromas are dominated by red berries like raspberry. This red wine accompanied the vitello tonnato, as always cold veal with tuna mayonnaise, a dish with some umami. Sommelier Gustavo, also Argentinian, said that he would normally have chosen a sherry for that dish. Knowing what I now know it would have been easy to agree.

I had quite a bit of luck, as the croquetas were more spicy than expected, and also the last wine was more sweetish than expected. Las Nubes 2021 is made by José Luís Mounier, whom Gustavo called the father of the grape torrontés in Argentina. Light straw coloured, and on the nose it was very perfumed with flowers and honey. This gives a sweetish sensation, not sweetness. The same continued into the taste, not unlike a dry moscatel. I had a suspicion though that this was a wine made with selected yeasts, later confirmed by the producer’s web page. Anyway, the marriage was good, and I am happy to have found a new wonderful wine bar in central Madrid.

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Dinner with Daniel Ramos

Published 5. March 2023 by Vidar Kenneth Johansen

Daniel Ramos shares the bodega with Fabio Bartolomei in El Tiemblo, Ávila province. After the lunch that I told about in another post Daniel and I decided to meet, since my hotel was in San Martín de Valdeiglesias, where he lives.

Daniel puts a lot of effort into making wines that reflect the personality of the soils, varieties and terroirs in the Cebreros region. Garnacha and albillo real are the most important grape varieties. The wines are all made in a natural way, with a low sulfur content and without clarification or filtering.

We tasted five wines in different styles, all of which performed well. El Berrakin can be considered an introduction to the Gredos area, a bright and luscious garnacha (7% cariñena) with red fruits, herbs, pepper nose. Perhaps dangerously drinkable at 14,5 alcohol. Κπ Amphorae is very different. It’s fermented and matured with skins for 11 months in clay tinajas, resulting in a complex, layered and chewy wine with ripe red fruit, herbs and a flowery component. Clos Pepi was a quite warm red from a vineyard that his wife Pepi contributed to acquire. And yes, I loved the white Κπ Real, rich and powerful, but also fresh, and with a tropical component. Κπ is by the way pronounced ‘Ka Pi’. I have read somewhere that it is short for Capitán and a nickname for Daniel himself. I have to ask him about this.

The dinner and tasting was held in my hotel Hacienda la Coracera, which was excellent and inexpensive, and hereby recommended.

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Lunch in El Tiemblo

Published 3. March 2023 by Vidar Kenneth Johansen

On thursday I was invited to lunch by my friend, natural wine maker Fabio Bartolomei, in his bodega. He is now making wines in the old cooperative of the town El Tiemblo, a building he shares with collegue Daniel Ramos.

Fabio to the right, with Sinta Moreso and Daniel Ramos

Daniel was there. So was natural wine maker Sinta Moreso from Tarragona. So was a group of young aspiring chefs from here and from San Sebastian, whom Fabio has been mentoring in their hobby winemaking projects. One of them, Fernando, will from next week join the crew of star restaurant Maaemo of Oslo, by the way. The lunch went on without a strict program, people came and left. But the lunch was eventually served, and it was delicious. There was some wine tasting, of Fabio’s wines -mostly originating from El Tiemblo (Sierra de Gredos), various projects of the participants, and someone even brought a magnum of Granada producer Barranco Oscuro’s wine called 1368 in the 2003 vintage. This was another proof that natural wines can age.

Before I left Fabio and I tasted a few more wines from his cellar. Fabio’s starting point is healthy grapes, free of chemicals. Experience and experimentation tells him how to proceed in making balanced wines that are true to their terroir and that suit Fabio’s taste.

A twenty years old natural wine from Barranco Oscuro
of Granada

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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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Wine of the Week

Castaño’s Hécula

Published 20. January 2023 by Vidar Kenneth Johansen

This Christmas I visited Bodegas Castaño in Yecla, Murcia, for the first time in more than 20 years. They are in conversion to organic farming. And if I remember right, all wines will soon have the seal, except for some wines where part of the grapes are purchased. One of their slogans is “the art of monastrell”, and through their various lines they showed what can be done with this emblematic grape of the Levante coast.

Daniel Castaño shows an ancient Roman track. Herbs contribute to the wines’ aroma

This week’s pick is one of my favourite monastrell wines. Hécula is an ancient Roman name for the town. The wine is a pure monastrell, and was also featured last year (read here). It can be considered their entry-level monastrell, but it’s not simple. It comes from a 750 meter altitude vineyard on limestone, with an average of 50 year old vines. It’s certified organic, made with spontaneous fermentation and got a few months of oak treatment (mostly French), with malolactic in steel. It’s very Mediterranean and very good.

Four historic labels, the actual to the left

Hécula Organic 2020 (Bod. Castaño)

Dark cherry red. On the nose it shows ripe berries (morello), plum, aromatic herbs (thyme, rosemary) and a hint of coffee. Full in the mouth with mature tannins, an earthy note and a fine acidity.

Price: Low

Food: All kinds of meat, stews, salads with meat (such as Caesar), murcian paella…

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