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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 »
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.
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.
Today I had a long Saturday lunch my family. It was the big day of the Epiphany or “Reyes Magos”, as we say in Spain, and all the children went crazy when they received their presents before the meal. While we were having an aperitif of “serrano” cured ham from the famous La Garriga shop in Madrid, I rescued from my father’s cellar a Rioja CVNE Imperial 1996, that went quite well with artichokes in white wine and onion sauce and a fantastic Iberian pig dish, rounded up with home made cheese cake.
My first memory of red wine is actually CVNE, always drank at home, a typical preference of some Bilbao families. CVNE crianza is a light and musical wine. I still remember my grandfather asking for a “half-bottle” of 37,5 cl. of young CVNE when he had lunch in his house on weekdays.
CVNE Imperial is the pride of this winemaker, a reserva only bottled when the year in Rioja obtains a top classification. 1996 was such a year and the bottle we drank today was part of the last case that remains from my wedding back in 2001. When we served the wine, it was beautifully colored, like the last red leaves in late Fall. It very slowly developed many wooden flavors with a touch of vanilla. The bottle was not in perfect shape, but nobody demands formal perfection when enjoying some the best memories of childhood.
Yesterday the editors of Iberians on wine had dinner at the fantastic restaurant Pablo Gallego, in La Coruña, Galicia. Pablo is a star among the new generation of daring Galician chefs and firmly believes in enhancing local fare with cosmopolitan creativity.
We solved the usual what to drink dilemma white or red by drinking… both. Miguel Álvaro de Campos, founding editor of Iberians on wine, ordered the high end Albariño Terras Gauda 2005 to go with the seafood salad and clams with mushrooms in green sauce (heaven, I am in heaven…).
I then asked for a Remelluri reserva 2001, a modernized Rioja that made me feel like I was carefully driving an old Jaguar through the hilly roads of Alava in a shiny winter morning.
Iberians on wine 