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Tag: Spain

Wine of the Week

Tasty white Toro

I 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

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Wine of the Week

An albillo with personality

La 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

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Wine of the Week

Back to Bullas

Here 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

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Articles and Wine bars and restaurants

More from Murcia

Back in Murcia for Christmas celebrations, I never miss an opportunity to visit La Gracia natural wine bar near the cathedral (and the bull ring). Sommelier Esperanza tells that they will organize a natural wine fair on the 21st of January, called #vinosinresaca (that means wine without hangover), where some 25 of the most prestigious microbodegas from all over the country will participate. I really appreciate and support the initiative, though I can’t participate this first time. You should if you are near.

This evening I chose a plain Italian focaccia to go with all three wines, that were excellent. I opened with an aperitif, the sparkler Malaherba 2019 from Finca Parera, Penedès. It’s a rich and tasty wine with lots of body based on the xarel.lo vermell (red) grape, with yellow fruits aroma with wax and iodine.

The invitation to the upcoming fair and the Duarte bobal

Next was Duarte 2022, a young bobal-tempranillo with fresh and dark berries and herbs, quite simple, but tasty. Good fruit throughout, and the tannins were quite firm and seemed young. Its maker Verónica Romero from Utiel-Requena, València is a comet in today’s natural wine sky. The wine is made with whole bunches in a variant of the carbonic maceration.

One of the more established natural wine producers in the Gredos mountains is Cható Gañán, where Kike Prados holds the reins. Navaciegos is a quite complex garnacha wine, purple coloured, aromas of red and dark fruits, also some dried herbs, and a layer of coffee. In the mouth it is full, quite dense and concentrated, with rounded tannins and good fruit. It’s made in Navahondilla, in a 0.35 hectares vineyard of 60 year old vines, at about 785 meters of altitude, with very degraded granite soil. A small part of the grapes are foottrodden and vatted with stems. The rest is destemmed. It was aged in French barrels of 500 liters at various ages.

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Articles

Mallorcan countdown

Looking forward to spend the new year weekend in Mallorca I have begun to count down with a few wines.

Ca’n Verdura is located in Binissalem, the most historic wine town in modern times, giving name to that DO in 1991. They grow mainly native varieties such as mantonegro, callet and moll.

Supernova 2022 (Ca’n Verdura)

This wine is made from the moll variety, from a vineyard planted in 1958 on clay, limestone and gravel. The farming is organic (though not certified), and it was fermented with ingenious yeasts in stainless steel and barrel.

Light yellow with a green hint. Yellow apples, melon, white flowers and a stony minerality. Medium full, lightly creamy lees character, adequate acidity, salty, and a green touch in the finish.

Negre 2021 (Ca’n Verdura)

This is some kind of entry-level, unpretentious red, made primarily from mantonegro (60%), complemented with merlot, cabernet sauvignon, monastrell and the local callet. The mantonegro is old-vine and the rest is from different vineyards of variable age and a diversity of soils (red clay, gravel, white clay).

Dark cherry. Red fruits (cherry), ink, herbs. Medium-bodied, fruity all the way, a touch menthol and coffee. Energetic and appealing.

Francesc Grimalt is a leading figure in the restoration of the callet grape variety. In 2006 he teamed up with musician Sergi Caballero and founded the 4 Kilos winery, based in Felanitx, not far from the city of Manacor. The name is an expression for 4 million pesetas, which was their initial investment to launch the company. They practice an environmentally-friendly agriculture with minimal intervention.

Motor Callet 2021 

One of the wines tried was Motor Callet. The vintage was the same as in a previous post. I include it in the picture, and you can read more of the company and the wine here.

The Island Syndicate 2019

While the MC is dominated by red fruits, this one is darker, in colour and fruit quality, a mix between dark and red fruits. It’s a callet 60%, and also mantonegro 30% and fogoneu 10%. With this, Francesc Grimalt wanted to make a wine that smelt “like his childhood”. The wine is made with natural yeasts he found from the now-defunct co-operative winery in Felanitx ‘Es Sindicat’.

Dark cherry colour. Aroma of dark and red fruits (blackberry, cranberry, redcurrant), Mediterranean herbs, plums. Medium-bodied, a good acidity, traces of almond, some coffee. The overall feeling is though the one of a light and appealing wine.

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Articles

Spanish visit to Stavanger

An armada of Spanish producers visited Stavanger, Norway this last Tuesday with their importer Moestue Grape Selections. I participated at the following dinner at Matbaren Renaa.

Visiting from Spain were Telmo Rodríguez, Fernando García (Comando G) and Carlos “Curro” Bareño (Fedellos and Vinícola Mentridiana). Pedro Parra from Itata, Chile should have been there, but was left somewhere in Europe with covid.

Paired with the restaurant’s lobster, lamb and quail dishes were seven wines. The fino Caberrubia Saca VI from Luís Pérez was a welcome drink, a natural sherry from pago Balbaína outside Jerez. It’s a grapey, salty and fresh sherry with no added alcohol.

Telmo Rodríguez introduced his white Branco de Santa Cruz 2020 from Valdeorras. He tells that this is one of the places he spends most time nowadays. It’s made from that premium northern grape godello, with some treixadura, doña blanca and palomino, all found in a mixed vineyard together with red varieties, and matured in used oak vats. It’s a super elegant wine with good volume, textured, and a complex aroma of citrus, herbs, a touch of menthol and a stony minerality.

Fedellos started as Fedellos do Couto because they were based in that village. Now they have moved. They make wines from the Bibei valley. Peixe da Estrada 2019 is a village wine from Viana do Bolo outside both Valdeorras and Ribeira Sacra designated areas, a field blend of 60-80 year old vines with predominantly mencía made with whole bunches in partially used barrels, steel, concrete and/or fiberglass tanks. Long maceration time and light extractions. It’s a fresh, delicate wine with aromas of red and dark fruits along with herbs and some balsamic.

Pedro Parra couldn’t attend as he was sick with covid and stuck somewhere in Europe. But his wines made it to Norway. Pedro is a leading figure in the new terroir-focused Chilean wave, concentrating on cinsault on granite soils. He tries to make his wines in a reductive way, at present with 20 days skin-contact.

Trane was obviously (?) dedicated to John Coltrane, an innovator and creative jazz musician. It’s a single-vineyard cinsault from a plot of highly decomposed granite soils. It fermented in concrete with indigenous yeasts and some 30% full clusters and matured in big oak vats for 11 months. It’s a light wine, but also structured. The fruit is both dark and red, with hints of flowers, anise and smoke.

Fernando García represented Comando G, that has contributed to putting the Gredos mountains on the wine map. They were also on this trip promoting the book Calicata, about the wine region. The English edition was released a few months ago, and Moestue sells it on the Norwegian market. In fact I was visiting Fernando at his table when another wine was passed around. I didn’t realize this in time, but my fiancée gave me a few drops to taste. It had a strong signature of a Gredos garnacha, ruby red, ethereal, with red fruits (raspberry), flowers and smoke – in a way light, but intensely full of flavours. It turned out to be Las Iruelas 2019, a parcel wine from El Tiemblo in the Ávila province. It was earlier made by the Jiménez-Landi family winery, but is now labelled Comando G.

The last wine was a lovely rioja from the new wave, that I advocate, Telmo’s Tabuérniga 2019. It comes from a cool vineyard in the village of Labastida, planted with old tempranillo vines, some graciano, mazuelo, garnacha and garnacha blanca. The soil is shallow and calcareous. It’s a serious wine; somewhat austere and maybe a little closed, but underneath are red and wild berries waiting to burst; it’s full of fruit and the tannins are elegant. It’s a wine that invites you to meet again, so let’s remember it and follow. A wonderful evidence that a wine does not need to be oaky to be complex nor ageworthy.

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Wine of the Week

Unrivalled rioja

Here 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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Wine of the Week

Waxy xarel.lo

Clos Lentiscus is located inside the national park in the Garraf mountains. We are outside Sant Pere de Ribes in Catalunya. The winery was established in 2001 by Manel and Joan Aviñó. Here they cultivate 22 hectares of vineyards biodynamically, of which 95 percent are planted with local grape types from the Garraf area. The soils are calcareous with marine fossils.

No pesticides or herbicides are used in the vineyard. There we also find sheep, that ensure that the grass is kept down, and also contributing to the compost.

The grapes for this wine are xarel.lo from a vineyard planted around 1940. Harvested and selected by hand. Spontaneous fermentation. Aged in amphora.

Perill Blanc Amfora 2020 (Clos Lentiscus)

Golden colour, slightly turbid. Aroma of lemon peel, wax, and a volatile touch. Full in the mouth, saline, vibrant and vivid, with good acidity, and a touch of grapefruity bitterness in the end.

Price: Medium

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Wine of the Week

Arizcuren’s Garnacha

Garnacha was once the main variety in the historic vineyards of the lower Rioja. This wine is a nod to this tradition. We are in the northern slopes of the Sierra de Yerga. Javier Arizcuren here works with some of the few old vineyards, in the Gobelet conduction system.

The wine seeks to be an expression of the both the variety and of the place where it grows, therefore no foreign products are used in the process (except a small amount of sulfur). The wood is used exclusively for thewine stabilization process, without being excessively marked.

The grapes were manually harvested, with grape selection in the field. De-stemming. Alcoholic fermentation with wild yeasts at around 25ºC. Daily stirring and pumping over, then only stirring. Malolactic fermentation in steel. 8 months in 225-litre American oak barrels (6th year) and an additional 2 months in new French oak barrels.Total SO2 is 50 mg/litre.

Solo Garnacha 2016 (Javier Arizcuren)

Dark cherry red. Youthful aroma of blackberry and cherry, a touch of coffee and sweet spice. Full in the mouth, rich with good weight and concentration, fine tannins, balanced acidity. Still young, and will improve.

Price: Medium

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Wine of the Week

Carefully crafted Caíño

Zarate is Eulogio Pomares‘ family winery in Meaño, Rías Baixas. Eulogio still makes the wines here, as he has done since the 2000 vintage. But in recent years he has also put a lot of effort into making wines under his own name.

This wine originates from a vineyard close to the sea, with alluvial granite and river stones and almost 80 year old vines. It was fermented in large traditional chestnut fudres with a further eight months on lees.

Carralcoba Caíño Tinto 2016 (Eulogio Pomares)

Cherry red. Cool red fruits (raspberry, cherry), spice (nutmeg). Juicy and delicate, but also with crunch, salinity and a savoury acidity. Maybe optimal drinking at the moment.

Price: Medium-high

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