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Summer brings more time to find new wines and enjoy them. Before this one is officially over, let me share with you how wonderful it was to taste this year’s Valenciso Rosado. This rosé is a very short production that the Valenciso mavericks usually present around May. It has the best dark pink colour I have ever seen in a wine and it reminds you of fruit for desert in a picnic when you were a child (www.valenciso.com)
I was also very happy to drink Dinastia Vivanco, a 2010 crianza (8 euros), with my father during our days in Valldemossa, Majorca. My father is very exigent with wines -much less with his sons- and made a nod of appreciation when I brought this Rioja to the table, set out in the garden, next to lemon trees. Back in Galicia, I took with me to María’s family house in Monterroso, Lugo, a case of Tobía crianza 2010 (around 12 euros per bottle). This is an amazing Rioja, as subtle and unstoppable as a conversation between Galician natives about how to get from one place to another. Tobía resists well the comparison with this never ending exchange and can be drunk with the same pleasure of those who seek or imagine new paths and different routes.
Paco Garcia is not a typical Rioja wine. It is the standard bearer of a new generation that has arrived full of passion and imagination. The project is directed by the very young couple Juan Bautista García and Ana Fernández, and pays tribute to two “Pacos García” in the family, Juan Bautista’s father and a lost brother. Since 2008, this wine stands out as as an attractive experiment to lure the young who no longer drink wine back into Western civilization. I tried first Number 6, a wine that does not need profound thoughts to be truly enjoyed, at an incredible price of 5 euros per bottle. Today we drank the Crianza, around 12 euros, an exceptional work of art, seductive and more in touch with its own feelings.
Fruit, fun, friendship, love, excess, folly, all of these concepts want to be expressed by Paco Garcia. Do not be deterred by the somewhat strange X ray hand print in the label (a tribute to Paco father). This wine is a must and in spite of the party noises it wants to create, is faithful to the endless possibilities of roots. Paco Garcia, from the humble village of Murillo del Rio Leza, southwest of Logroño, is probably the best combination I have found lately of a garage experiment and serious determination to exalt the terroir.
Abel Mendoza is one of the most innovative and dedicated vignerons in Rioja. He works with his wife in the village of San Vicente de la Sonsierra, already a legendary place for new-new things in the blessed region. They are true artisans of taste. I have tried three of their wines thanks to the recommendation of my friend Benjamin Lana, who prefers to remain anonymous.
I started with their youngest one, called Jarrarte Joven (5 euros), a 2011 wine which turned upside down my usually low expectations on carbonic maceration. It was like a glimpse of the summer, full of optimism and encompassing very different sentiments. A morning walk on the beach.
The second one, Jarrarte Crianza 2008 (circa 16 euros), is an outstanding wine at an incredible price, more like hiking with your best friends on a mountain all day long while picking strawberries.
Finally, I tried their top wine, called Abel Mendoza Selección Personal 2009 (33 euros). It is a perfect wine, delicate, profound, engaging, a wine to start a long conversation at the end of a day, a fireside chat that could go on forever.
Three splendid wines in one haiku:
sweet strawberry
laughing, dancing in my mouth
come soon summer season
I have tried recently three wines that share two common traits: greatness, combined with a bad name. How come wine makers (or vignerons, if you prefer) sometimes choose names without thinking twice about how well they will sound and what will they evoke? Our words are our worlds, as Philip Allot wrote, or in a close to home version, we live in the words we use, Octavio Paz dixit.
Here are the three wonderful wines that caught my attention in spite of their names.
The first one is Predicador (“Preacher”, translated into English), a fantastic new Rioja, around 18 euros, so well made that even the ugly label with a hat from a cowboy B-movie should not deter you from triying it.
The second one is El Regajal (around 15 euros), from the Madrid region, a successful experiment, made out of four different grapes (tempranillo, cabernet, shyra and merlot, from a beautiful Aranjuez vineyard that is also a butterfly natural reserve. In this case the label improves the harsh sounding name of “regajal”: with an expresionist drawing of a butterfly, inspired long ago by Diego Mora-Figueroa, artist and friend.
The third wine is Eolo, from Navarre, a modest wine (around 4 euros, can you beat that?) that in spite of this silly name (Eolo is the god of wind, a tacky name with no connection to the wine) is worth trying, a very good coupage of Cabernet, Garnache, Merlot, Tempranillo and Merlot.
Some of you have suggested I write a follow up on my last post “Pairing wines and books”, this time on pairing wine and poetry. Others have asked me for recommendations of wines to celebrate St. Valentine’s Day. I am learning not to ignore a la Mubarak the wishes of my constituency, so here are some musings about both topics.
Luckily, I have come across three wines lately that you could serve to enjoy dinner aux chandeliers with a loved one. Each of them is so attractive that can be described through the work of my favorite poets.
The first one is Viña Ardanza reserva 2001, a classic Rioja that I had not drank in ages and that in 20011 has the most beautiful red color that can be imagined. It is so delicate that it reminded me of William Blake’s famous poem, “Love’s secret”, where he describes why love cannot, should not, be communicated, “Never seek to tell thy love / Love that never told can be/ For the gentle wind does move/ Silently, invisibly”.
The second wine is Jorge Ordoñez’s Volver 2008, from Castilla la Mancha, young and impetuous, like the passions full of demands and despair that John Hegley describes in his poems. In spite of its Almodovar name, Volver is a wine worth trying, that seduces you from the very first moment you taste it: “You stepped into the café / then you sat next to me/ I’d just ordered breakfast/ and you were my cup of tea (…) You said you painted portraits/ and you’d like a go at mine/ you said come up to my studio/ and be my turpentine”.
The third wine is Chivite Merlot Ecológico 2007, a new wine from this well-established winery in Navarre, made according to high ecological standards. Merlot is one of the grapes that always reminds me of why I love wine. Chivite has created a wine out of this world, delicate, pure, and worthwhile. It is one of those wines that you can remember with the verse “one hour was sunlit”, from Ezra Pound’s poem “Erat Hora”:
“Thank you, whatever comes”. And then she turned
And, as the ray of sun on hanging flowers
Went swiftly from me. Nay, whatever comes
One hour was sunlit and the most high gods
May not make boast of any better thing
Than to have watched that hour as it passed.
Writing this wine blog is becoming an experience full of pleasant surprises. Among them is being literally showered with presents from friends, mostly in the form of new wines you absolutely have to try. Of the countless gifts received these past weeks of holidays I want to single out three wines, that surprisingly went very well with the books I was reading at the time I drank them. May be pairing wine and books should be the new-new thing.
The three wines came from generous friends who prefer to remain anonymous. They are the kind of people who always live up to the WInston Churchill’s standard about giving, “we make a life by what we give”.
The first one was Morlanda vi de Guarda 2005, a wine from Priorat that seduced me like a good novel. I was actually reading those days with enormous pleasure Louis Auchincloss’ “The education of Oscar Fairfax” (another gift from a friend!) and I found that a similar complexity and sophistication was present in the wine and in the fantastic description of the New York ruling class in the XX century.
The second wine came from a modest and little know winery in Villabuena de Álava, Hermanos Frias del Val, who makes an original Rioja with personality without straying from tradition. It remind me of another great book I had just received, “Madrid en 20 barras” (Madrid in 20 tapas bars), of Armero ediciones, a wonderful new addition to their series of “20 magníficos” that selects and comments with wit and intelligence the best restaurants and places to eat in Madrid.
The third wine I remember well from these past weeks is Viña La Grajera, a new ecological wine made by the government of La Rioja itself, that was sent to me right before Christmas. It went very well with my re-reading of Boris Akunin’s Russian novels, a great pleasure I indulge in when I retreat to La Coruña. La Grajera is a profound and somewhat eccentric wine, just like the main character of Akunin’s stories, the police officer Erast Fandorin. Next time you open a new wine perhaps you can ask yourself, what book does it taste like or can I combine it with?
by Guest Editor Pablo Echenique
In these cold days of economic nightmares and political mediocrity many people really struggles to reach the end of the month without having to organize a garage sale at home to be able to survive.
Apparently, nowadays Spanish sovereign bonds are not exactly the international investor’s cup of tea. Probably this is due to the disastrous political and economic track record of our Government. Some brave decisions in the field of social rights are only a shining light in a quite dark global scenario. This notwithstanding, we still believe in the good shape of some world-class Spanish banks and companies that will keep us up and running. We also believe, of course, in our excellent wines. I have always thought that, in comparison with, for example, French or Italian wines, the Spanish offer the best value for money.
Becquer, a “vino de autor” coming from Rioja’s Bodegas Escudero (since 1852) is just an incredible example. I like to bring different wines to the family luncheon held every Saturday at my parents house. The other day we drank a bottle from the 2007 Becquer vintage. A jewel for less than 9 euros, it meets all the characteristics of a good wine and it has a powerful spicy bouquet of prunes and berries. Ideal to fight the crisis and to cheer-up. Just like certain tunes of those miraculous musical brothers named Rufus and Martha Wainwright, pure art against the difficulties of every-day life.
Whenever I have doubts about a wine, I ask Maria, my wife to taste it. She never fails to come up with an insightful and original comment. Often I call for her help a few minutes before our guests come to our house, when we are busy with the last details. I beg her to try the wine and only after she has given it a green light I go ahead and serve it.
During the summer I started to note down which wines she really likes and why. I have decided to call them Stratocaster wines. The reason is that Maria is crazy about Mark Knopfler and his Fender Stratocaster, a double-cutaway electric guitar, with an extended top horn for balance while standing. Invented in 1954, it is both a great music instrument and a revered piece of industrial design. The wines that María thinks are great have the wide range of tones of the Stratocaster guitar and usually are also very well built.
Convento de San Francisco was the first Stratocaster wine we tasted this summer. This Ribera was so smooth and powerful that when you tasted it you could almost hear the trebly sound with a high top end and bell-like harmonics of the famous guitar. Next was El Puntido 2004, from the Sierra Cantabria artists, a serious wine that opens up slowly and displays a signature personality, like that of a guitar player who finds in his Strat the right frequencies to be heard above the other 20 band members. Finally, we discovered Montecastro, another fantastic Ribera, with a sultans of swing type of liveliness.
Different Strats wines taste different, but since this summer I have started to listen more carefully to my senses, just like Maria and Mark Knopfler do when they taste or play the guitar.
I love Rioja in June. You wake up early, jump on your bike and soon you are exploring narrow dirt roads, surrounded by vineyards, as you go up and down the hills. From time to time you look into the horizon and admire the mountain ranges that protect this blessed region. This weekend I felt like a Tolkien hobbit that after a long journey returns to the Shire, where he comes from, and enjoys everything he finds there, as if the old things had become new. From bike rides to wine tasting, everything felt like a novelty. Perhaps la Rioja brings you back to childhood days, when you never got tired of watching the same things and life was about discovery. I tasted four wines that I had already drank before, but everyone of them was different and surprising. I tried first a classic, Viña Real crianza 2006, that had the same strong personality that the impressive and elegant new building that houses these traditional vignerons from Bilbao. It was great to taste in the morning, when your senses are so awake. Then we tried one of my favourite reds, Monte Real Reserva 2004, from Bodegas Riojanas, the Meca of Rioja that we had visited some hours before. This wine spoke to us about things extremely well made for centuries, but also about the excitement of new times. We also visited the small new Valenciso winery, a beautiful and austere building. Luis Valentín, co-author of this amazing wine story, explained with precise but passionate words his project. When we tasted the very different and outstanding 2002 and 2004 Valenciso Reservas, I felt like I never wanted to end my bike ride in the Shire.
Some weeks ago I was able to escape from the bleak winter of Madrid to the coast of Tunisia. During the trip I became acquainted with Angus Lordie, a portrait painter from Edinburgh. He is a direct guy, ascetic looking, with a deep voice, much in favor of whisky grants for poets and academics like himself. We did not drink any wine together but had some good conversations about politics, art and Scotland. He also chatted quite a bit about dogs with my wife. He pointed out that nowadays Edinburgh is full of wine bars, a development he welcomed as long as he was allowed in them with his dog Cyril.
When I returned home, I tried a couple of new wines that I thought Angus would like, even though he is not (yet) a wine person. Portraiture has its risks, but let me try to sketch both of these wines. The first one is Sierra Cantabria Cuvée 2005, a wine made by the Eguren family in Rioja. It is both modern and ancient, complex and pleasant. For a price of 15 euros, I do not think you can find a comparable red in Spain.
The second one is Almirez 2007, also a new-new thing of the Eguren clan, creators of the amazing Numanthia and Termanthia wines in the Toro region. Almirez is a younger brother who needs to be decanted and then surprises you with its own distinctive elegance. Each of these two wines would be a good model for Angus Lordie, painter of souls.
Iberians on wine 
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