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One of the things I admire about Peter Sisseck, the creator of Pingus, is his self-definition as “a lazy wine-maker”. A lot of us rush trough life, doing many things and doing them fast, too infuenced by ideas of overproduction and so called efficiency. Hence we miss a lot of very good things related to contemplation, siesta and walking on the slow lane. Not this summer and not when it comes to my writing about wine! I am unshamed to have been these past weeks a lazy wine-blogger. I have forgotten to look at the watch. Days have been long and nights have become part of my freedom. Nevertheless, I have found very good wines to comment in the last couple of months and finally here is my somewhat lazy recollection of them.
I begun my summer in Washington DC. The day I arrived my friend Franz Drees invited me to dinner in his house. I was walking in M Street, Georgetown when I got his call and I went into a local wine shop, Potomac wines and spirits, looking for a Spanish wine to bring to the party. I was happy to find a very broad selection of new and old Spanish wines, much better than during my years in Boston, in the early nineties, when the Spanish wine section consisted of two second rate Riojas and some not very moving “Mediterranean” wines. I decided to get two bottles of Viña Izadi, a beautiful and smooth young Rioja that has never let me down, as elegant as, well, as my favorite Washington writer, Christopher Buckley. Read the rest of this entry »
What grape do you like best?
Who hasn’t being asked this question?
More than once, isn’t it?
Personally, I think that the more wine I taste, the more I enjoy changing grapes, wines, yes even white ones, D.O.C., countries…… but on second thoughts, I cannot help thinking I have a marked preference for Merlot.
Smooth and mellow wine Merlot is perhaps the most accessible red wine for newcomers in the world of wine. Very good red-wine grape, a key player in the Bordeaux blend, more recently grown and produced as a varietal by itself, especially in California, Spain, Australia, Chile, Argentina, Italy….. you name it.
Most of the best Spanish merlot are medium bodied, with nice silky texture, black-cherry and herbal flavours are typical, great mouth feeling, fruity upfront: raspberry, currants and other red fruit. Long finish.
Merlot can be powerfully tannic and will benefit from bottle age. It is mainly grown in Cataluña, Somontano, but you can also find it in Alicante, Murcia, and yes even in Ribera de Duero.
Well, what about my favourite ones:
To start with we have Enate Merlot-Merlot (100% Merlot). Somontano. The most structured of the four merlots I tasted. It is a medium to full bodied wine with notes of lingering finish. Black and purple colour. Terrific fruit intensity. Excellent taste of dark fruits, herbal flavours and a hint of smoked wood. Full and savoury in mouth. Long velvety finish. It is fabulous with a mushroom risotto or a roast beef. Aftertaste shows an explosion of the fruits. Honestly and sincerely the Spanish Merlot I enjoyed most. Read the rest of this entry »
by Guest Contributor Pablo Echenique
“El que resiste, gana”. Such was the motto that the Spanish literature Nobel Prize winner, the late Camilo José Cela chose as ex libris to stamp in all his books. He who resists, shall win, as it would be said in English. I have borrowed it as a particular motto for myself. Perhaps because of my day-to-day work in a quite demanding Madrid law firm. The other Friday, after a long and busy week, I got out of the office and decided that I deserved to drink a good bottle of wine. I headed to a quite unknown street in Madrid that is home to three first class stores that sell three things any man adores, wine, cigars and classic films of all times, calle Hernani.
When I entered the wine shop, I could notice that Camilín, the owner (I suppose that he has nothing to do with Mr. Cela), stared at me probably thinking that I really needed a break. After a few minutes of conversation I asked him about the famous “Parker List” and the Spanish wines included in such a list. He quickly named the five wines awarded with 100 points, as if he was reciting the “Our Father”. Of all five, a name called my attention “Termanthia”, a wine from Toro (a region in the old Castille, province of Zamora). I decided to save the €100 for some romantic occasion next summer but he introduced me to Termanthia’s younger brother “Numanthia”. The price of the bottle, € 29, was more friendly for a budget wine drinker like me, so I did not hesitate to buy it. Read the rest of this entry »
May has been a busy and joyful month, with the birth of my son Santiago and with some trips abroad. The best part of these trips has been returning home to my family with a new member. As the poet John Hegley puts it: “Father is fond / beyond the call of beauty”. Thus, it has been a month to celebrate the arrival of the baby and to toast with different wines. Of all of them, I would single out one, Valenciso Reserva 2001, an outstanding Rioja.
The Valenciso project was launched in 1998 by two Rioja insiders, Luis Valentín y Carmen Enciso, in Ollauri, Rioja Alta. They decided to create a high quality wine, 100% tempranillo, only one wine per year, always a reserva, and to develop only one brand, thinking long term and putting a competitive price (a bit less of 20 euros per bottle). A lot of attention was paid to selection of grapes from old vineyards and to the use of new French oak barrels.
When you drink Valenciso 2001 you realize the beauty of modernized Riojas, true to their terroir but emancipated from classicism, with strong personalities –a little bit like I imagine my sons in some years. The first time I tried Valenciso in Bilbao, with my friend Fernando Maura, I was reminded of a Bourdeaux, for its perfect combination of wooden and fruit flavours. I went back to it a week ago and everybody around the table remarked how the wine was opening up and evolving, offering new sensations, surprising us …like our children do, I thought. So I invite you to admit this new member in the family of your favorite wines.
I have recently tried three magnificent wines and by coincidence they all had Roman sounding names: Malleolus, Summa Varietalis and Tagonius. It was a brave act, because in my very one-sided perspective, I don’t like the Spanish trend of giving Latin names to wine: Romani ite domum!
I admit that a Latin name has a universal ring to it and that Romans loved wine from all of the Iberian peninsula -we don´t know how good it was but they certainly enjoyed it a lot. And yet this return to Latin inevitably reminds me of the surreal names in Asterix comics or in a Monthy Pyton movie. I cannot help smiling when I see some of the new wine names. (“All right, but apart from sanitation, medicine, education, wine, public order, irrigation, roads, the fresh-water system and public health, what have the Romans ever done for us?)
In any case, “in vino veritas”: I would drink again any of these three wines, even if they had Skimo-sounding names! Although each of them deserves careful individual attention, let me summarize in this post how much I enjoyed them.
Malleolus is the top wine of Emilio Moro´s vineyards in Ribera del Duero. It is a light, smooth and balanced wine, so elegant that it went well even with the famous dish of seafood and “acelgas” (bot chard?) that attracts me to La Bodeguilla restaurant in La Coruña. In a shop you can find it for 30 euros, a price well justified.
Summa Varietalis is the creature of Xandra Falcó, daughter of the Marqués de Griñón, the visionary winemaker. Like her father, she is an innovator and shares a similar passion for refined, interesting, out of the box wines. Summa belongs to the Dominio de Valdepusa school in Toledo, but it stands out in this fantastic microcosmos. It is a wine that combines beautifully the three grapes that have grown so well in South Castilla- cabernet sauvignon, shyraz and petit verdot- and surprises you with many nuanced flavors while you drink it. We had a bottle from 2003 it at a recent dinner while discussing the fate and future of World Bank President Paul Wolfowitz. The wine helped us become mellow, joyful and even merciful. At around 20 euros, it is still a great buy.
Tagonius is a top Madrid red, clearly connected with the wine revolution of La Mancha. It is a strong, full bodied wine, very direct and exhuberant. It sells at 10 euros per bottle. I very much admire the way this tempranillo-based wine combines fantastic fruit and wooden flavours.
To tell you the truth, I normally enjoy wine without thinking too much about the food I have with it. But this week in two ocassions I realized how a a wine becomes sensational thanks to something one is eating and viceversa, how sometimes food is wondrously enhanced by a certain wine.
The first perfect match was in Casa Hortensia, a classic restaurant from Asturias in the heart of Madrid. The old fashioned waiter brought automatically a plate of Cabrales cheese to our table as an apetizer, together with village bread, an “hogaza”. Without anticipating the cheese, we had ordered Viña Albina Reserva 2000, a trustworthy, elegant Rioja, very well priced. It comes from Bodegas Riojanas, one of the most respected and traditional companies in the region. The unplanned combination of Cabrales cheese, bread and wine was heavenly and ordering anything else we devoted our full attention to enjoying this miracle.
The second unexpected “perfect match” was a combination of Son Bordils Negre 2002 with red mullets in gelée sauce in El Bodegón, perhaps the best restaurant in Madrid today. Its house wine is actually Viña Albina, but since I was there with two wine mavens who already know Rioja upside down, I chose Son Bordils, a new wine from Majorca. This wine was made for the first time in 1998 in the plains of Inca, in an area where wine has been produced since the XIII century. I had tried it a few summers ago in Valldemossa and had become a favorite Majorcan, together with Anima Negra. Son Bordils is a very modern, direct, expressive wine, with an intriging touch of sulphur. But we really started to rave about it when we tasted it together with the red mullets. It was a glorious trip to a Mediterranean summer night.
A few weeks ago I was faced with a difficult decision. What wine to serve in our last dinner at Amanecer 8, the house where we had lived for the last 15 months, a place by then full of good memories of wines tasted over countless dinners with friends. I decided to try Abadia Retuerta Selección Especial 2003. It was my lucky night. Everybody loved it and more importantly, wine led us to lucid conversation and after a few hours we had clarified, if not solved, some of the most pressing world problems, including the relationship between Europe and the US and were to buy the best ready made food if you are single, busy and live in Madrid.
Abadia Retuerta is surprisingly owned by Novartis, the pharmaceutical global giant. The vineyard is located at the heart of the Duero, around a XII century Abbey, and for a few inches does not belong to the official Ribera region. This geographical point has become actually an advantage and Novartis has spared nothing in terms of creativity and means to make wines that relate to their beauty of the hills and valleys were the grapes grow. Selección Especial 2003 is an amazing buy at around euros per bottle. It has a lot of personality and I found it splendid, smooth and delicate.
This wine maker is in the newspapers these days because a new highway is planned across some of its best vineyards, with terrible environmental consequences. Let’s hope our politicians and bureaucrats reconsider this decision and learn from these winemakers to combine modernity with passion for the terroir.
http://www.abadia-retuerta.com
salvaelduero.com
The question came out of the blue while enjoying a glass of wine at Barolo (Príncipe de Vergara 211, Madrid, http://www.enotecabarolo.com)
Maria hinted “The Jumilla’s Altos de Luzan”. A 13 € bottle of blended 50% monastrel, 25% cabernet sauvignon and 25% tempranillo. “And we will have some money left for tapas” she added. A purpled coloured wine with a dominant new oak and fruity aroma, overall equilibrium in mouth and persistent tannin nicely integrated. It was really a good start.
“What about Dominio de Tares Cepas Viejas?” suggested Ignacio. I couldn’t agree more. A Bierzo made red wine (100% mencia), 12 € a bottle, medium to dark ruby, powerful fruity aroma, round and mouth filling and a hint of coffee in the finish. And still enough money left to have a tapa. A good buy.
“I rather go for Casa Castillo” said Blanca. “Well, things are looking up”, I thought. This estate bottle blend from Jumilla of 90% monastrel and 10% cabernet sauvignon is a dark ruby wine with sweet American oak scented nose, long in mouth. It must be tasted to be believed and for 9 €, real value for your money.
“What would you say to Baltasar Gracian, Grenache, Viñas Viejas (Calatayud)” I ventured to suggest. Dark intense cherry, depth scent with the Grenache thick, full bodied and superbly concentrated, with a straight forward and pleasant finish. For only 4, 5 €, a bargain.
“Not bad, not bad” Blanca answered me back,” but have you heard of Finca La Estacada?” Oh, come on, that was below the belt, a 3, 5 € bottle 100 % tempranillo coming from Cuenca (Vinos de la Tierra de Castilla). Bright cherry, fruity scent, strong and dry tannins, perhaps a bit toughs but with a future. A terrific bargain
“Can you beat it?” Pressed me Blanca again. Well, actually I could. For 2.2 € you can buy the Lavinia cosechero a medium bodied wine, with mild acidity, smooth berry taste. A superb every day wine. An unbeatable bargain. (Lavinia, José Ortega y Gasset 16, Madrid, http://www.lavinia.es)
To wind up my gossiping, it’s up to you to work out the answer to the question.
by guest contributor Fernando Vigón
This week I tried for the first time Valsardo Reserva Superior 1999. It made a fantastic impression on me and had no secondary effects. Let me explain this. Wine is an intoxicant, created to give lots of pleasure, but its ingestion can cause (depending on the person drinking and the amount) some negative consequences.
Valsardo is made in such a way that you can enjoy fully an outstanding Ribera del Duero, drink quite a bit and feel great inmediatly afterwards. This is a “healing wine”, I decided, as Eduardo and Alfonso López de la Osa, introduced me to it at Iroco restaurant, in Madrid. My friends are respectively husband and son of Paloma Escribano, owner and creator of Valsardo. The vineyard is located in Peñafiel, Valladolid, underneath the famous castle. Paloma´s family has been making wine in the region probably since Roman times. She decided to renew the tradition by going both back to the past and way forward into the future. She has obtained highly “natural” wines, with almost zero sulphites and without a high alcohol content (alcohol is the other way to conserve wine), but at the same time she has invested a lot on technology, analysis, laboratory work and quality of the process.
Valsardo wines can still be difficult to find in Spanish wine shops, so the best option is their website, http://www.valsardo.com. A few hours after you drink it, my bet is that you will be singing along with Van Morrison:
Here I am again
Back on the corner again
Back where I belong
Where I’ve always been
Everything the same
It don’t ever change
I’m back on the corner again
In the healing game
Pago de Carraovejas is one of my favorite Ribera del Duero wine makers. It is located in Peñafiel, a village full of medieval Castilian history, in the heart of this wine region. It makes superb wines thanks to passion for detail and the intelligent use of the best technology available. Carraovejas wines are sold at good prices, without using sophisticated marketing techniques or carrying trendy and misterious names, that sometimes evoke Asterix comics.
Pago de Carraovejas trustworthy wines have only been around since 1988 but have quickly become a big success, to the point that sometimes they are hard to find in shops or restaurants. The company Carraovejas belongs to José María, the owner of the restaurant in Segovia with his name that offers the best meat dishes in the Roman city.
I have learnt to love Carraovejas thanks to my wife and her brother, María and Josechu, the most exigent and developed Noses in the family. They know the Ribera del Duero region very well and they chose Pago de Carraovejas 2004 to celebrate last Christmas season in Galicia. The wine was very direct and smooth, of a beautiful cherry colour. We liked it so much that we even had it with fish and with seafood.
Iberians on wine 
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