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Wine Chords Posts

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

A modern Arinto classic

I picked two bottles of this wine from my own cellar to enjoy at private dinners. In both cases it was served blind. It’s made by my good friend Pedro Marques, now a classic producer on the coast of Lisboa.

Marques’ wines come from organically farmed vines in the Lisboa region. The estate is located around eight km from the Atlantic Ocean, on limestone soils rich with fossils. The limestone content contributes to the freshness and saltiness in the wines.

The arinto grapes are spontaneously fermented on the lees at relatively high temperatures (around 18 degrees), as Pedro values texture and body in the wine. He uses barrels in the fermentation and the maturation process, to increase the complexity and make the wine less reductive. This matches well with the grape’s high natural acidity.

Arinto 2017 (Vale da Capucha)

Deep golden colour. Aroma of lemon peel, yellow tomatoes, pickled apricot and a touch of mature apples. Unctuous in the mouth, concentrated and packed with fruit, an acidity that gives it a special nerve, and a long, saline finish. A modern classic that speaks of its homeland near the sea.

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

Saravá’s Skin Contact

I have met Miguel Viseu and his wife Leli Dalla Costa several times at the Simplesmente Vinho fair. And I have also seen Miguel at Aphros, where he is winemaker. I tasted their whole range of inspiring wines earlier this year, and got the chance to re-taste two of them when they appeared in my local market. The label of this one reads only Saravá, but it’s the skin contact version, curtimenta in Portuguese, as opposed to the “normal” white loureiro.

The grapes are loureiro 70% and trajadura 30%, grown in the Lima valley. It had 5 months maceration on skins, mostly destemmed, with a short ageing in chestnut and clay.

Brazilian exclamation

Saravá 2022 (Galactic Wines)

Yellow colour. Aroma of citrus zest, white flowers and a mineral touch. Juicy looks the mouth, with a fresh acidity and a saline finish. A vibrant and balanced wine with careful skin contact.

Price: Medium

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Wine bars and restaurants and Wine of the Week

A Douro at Bar Douro

Last Thursday I popped into the Bar Douro (London Bridge) and had a few Portuguese wines. One of them was Folias de Baco‘s irresistible pét nat.

But first, Bar Douro opened in 2016 with the aim of bringing a piece of the authentic Portugal to London. Four years later another opened in the City. Max, the owner, is in fact in the family of Churchill’s port, and he spent his childhood days in Portugal. The whole staff takes pride in its passion for the country.

Michael, general manager, in front of a blue and white tiled wall

I have met and visited winemaker Tiago Sampaio several times. He is located near Alijó, one of the coolest places in the Douro. It’s him who runs Folias de Baco, and the family also have a wine bar of that name in Porto. Search the blog for more.

This wine is made with the old method, in French “méthode ancestrale”, means it is bottled with some amount of residual sugar left in the wine, so it can continue fermenting and producing carbon dioxide (which creates the bubbles). The yeasts give the natural cloudiness.

Wine waiter Oliver pours our pet nat

Uivo Pt Nat Branco 2022 (Folias de Baco)

Pale yellow colour, cloudy with discrete bubbles. Aroma of white flowers, peach and grapefruit. Medium bodied, lively and energetic, with a fresh acidity and a saline touch.

Price: Low

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Wine of the Week

Classy Californian at Tempo

This wine concluded a jazz club meeting with tasting at my local wine bar, called Tempo, after the famous bicycles that were once produced in the building.

Scar of the Sea is ru by Mikey and Gina Giugni in San Luis Obispo, California. They work with farmers who practise low-intervention in an attempt to make the viticulture as sustainable as possible. As they say, they want their wines “to tell a story of where they come from, the people who farm them, and reflect each vintage under the California sun.”

You have by now understood that they work organic, and ferment with native yeast. The wines see only a minimum of sulphur additions, and they are not fined or filtrated.

The Bassi Vineyard Pinot Noir is produced from around 25 year old vines on the hillsides of Avila Valley by the coast. It’s in transition to biodynamic certification. It was The fruit was fermented with 70% whole-cluster. The wine was pressed once dry in a wooden basket press then aged for 10 months in old French oak.

Bassi Vineyard Pinot Noir 2022 (Scar of the Sea)

Ruby red. Fruity scent, aroma of raspberry and strawberry, white flowers and herbs. Fine tannins, good body and concentration, fresh acidity. A Californian with class.

Price: High

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Wine of the Week

Our Mann at Elliott’s

Back in London and a busy Borough Market at lunchtime. Elliott’s was opened in 2011 by Brett Redman, from Australia, with the aim of serving only produce sold at the market. It has long been one of my favourites, and you can read a couple of posts here and here.

Andi Mann is based in Eckelsheim, Rheinhessen. He makes lively, energetic wines, organic with some biodynamic methods. The soil is limestone (to which the name Calx alludes), and the age of the vines is around 40 years.

This wine is based on grauburgunder, whose official name is pinot gris. Many of you will know that this variety is not completely “white”. It has red spots, so as a skin-contact wine it will take on a red or reddish colour, depending on the length of contact. (Read about another wine of that kind here.)

Half of the grapes were directly pressed, the other half had fermentation on skins for 2 weeks. The juice was then fermented and stored in large German oak barrels for 1 year. It was bottled without filtration or addition of sulphur.

Calx Grauburgunder 2022 (Andi Mann)

Beautiful blushing colour. Aroma of citrus peel, flowers and ripe peach. Delicate tannins, quite full and juicy, with a fresh acidity. Dangerously quaffable.

Price: Medium

Food: We had it with lightly spiced chicken and beef carpaggio, but it should go with a variety of fish and light meat.

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Wine of the Week

Fresh north Lisboa tinta roriz

This is a wine from a winery that I’ve met several times at the Simplesmente Vinho fair in Porto. Quinta do Olival da Murta is located in the Cadaval area of the Lisboa region, near the mountain range Serra de Montejunto. Joana Vivas and her family make honest low-intervention wines here, only 15 kilometers from the Atlantic ocean, thus giving the wines a fresh, saline character.

José Vivas (photographed at Simplesmente Vinho 2021)

The soils are clay and limestone, and the vines are quite young, around 20 years. The gapes were harvested manually. The bunches were totally de-stemmed without crushing the grapes. Semi-carbonic fermentation was carried out in 500-liter French oak barrels, with indigenous yeasts, for one and a half days. The grapes were gently pressed in a vertical hydraulic press in a wooden basket. The fermentation process ended in barrels. Then it was aged 10 months in used 500 liter French oak barrels. Unfined and unfiltered.

Serra Oca Tinta Roriz 2022 (Quinta do Olival da Murta)

Ruby red. Aromas of fresh fruits (cherry, strawberry), with a layer of wild berries also. Fine tannins, fresh acidity and a saline finish.

Price: Medium-low

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Wine of the Week

Claro’s Colar

I have met Vítor Claro several times, and I’ve had the pleasure to taste his wines at the Simplesmente Vinho fair in Portugal. Vítor is a former chef, and has worked at a well-known restaurant owned by Dirk Niepoort. Now he makes wine together with his partner Rita Ferreira in Portalegre, Alentejo – from vineyards near the winery and in Colares.

They work naturally and so-called low-intervention. The wines are not clarified nor filtered, and sulphite is typically low (around 40mg total). The varieties are local, and the style is fresh, fruit-driven and elegant, with less alcohol than you might expect.

Colar is produced with grapes sourced in a tiny plot by the Adraga beach in the Colares wine region – in limestone soil with clay. Colar means necklace, but the word also hints to where the wine is from. It is made mainly with the red castelão and the white malvasia varieties, and as Vítor puts it, “seasoned” with the red caladoc. It’s made with whole bunches. After a short maceration, it’s fermented in stainless steel, then aged for 6 months in concrete.

Dominó Colar 2021 (Rita Ferreira & Vítor Claro)

Ruby red. Aromas of red fruits (raspberry, strawberry), backed by flowers and herbs. It has technically a low acidity, but appears fresh and fruity. The weight is light, yet it shows a nice concentration, the tannins are pleasant, and a nice saltiness shows in the finish.

Price: Medium

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