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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.