Previous: Ride the New Wave of Spanish Wine!
Our May 2023 New Wave Spain Six-Pack showcases some deliciously exciting trends in Spanish wine, introducing you to flavors, textures, and styles you might not expect from Spain. Here, we cover the wines in the six-pack: where each wine is from, what wines of that region are typically like, the people who made the wine, and a brief tasting note.
Next: What’s the Old Wave of Spanish Wine?
Wine #1
Mokoroa Getariako Txakolina 2022
The Region and Its Wine
Txakolina (or Txakoli – the terms are interchangeable) is the traditional white wine of the Basque people, and versions can be found all along the Spain/France border through the Pyrenees Mountains. The best sites for wine, though, are in the Basque Country, an autonomous region on Spain’s northern coast along the Bay of Biscay. Spain recognizes three official Txakolina wine regions here: Arabako, Bizkaiko and – best of all – the tiny Getariako Txakolina DO just 18 miles from the French border.
Getariako has a more moderate climate than the other Txakoli regions, with cool air from the sea moderating the hot summer sun. But it also has lots and lots of rain – typically 60-plus inches per year. To manage the humidity, rot and mildew, growers traditionally train their vines high up wood poles and stone posts. In the 20th century, wires between the poles/posts were added, letting the vines spread out over the rows in a kind of pergola effect, keeping air flowing to dry things out a bit.
Wine has always been important here, and in around 1900 there were at least 1,000 hectares of vines and hundreds of farmers and wineries making wine for consumption locally, in nearby San Sebastien, and for sailors to take with them to sea. But phylloxera hit the region hard in the early 1900s, as did industrialization (pulling residents away from the villages and fields) and Franco’s aggressive suppression of Basque culture. By the 1990s, there were only 60 hectares of vines remaining. Today that’s grown slightly to nearly 200 hectares of vines and 17 commercial wineries.
The climate here isn’t friendly to grapes that evolved for drier, more traditional vineyard conditions. So viticulture has always focused on true local grapes. The few red grapes cultivated are Hondarribi Beltza. Other than a few small plantings of Chardonnay and Sauvignon, the white grapes are almost entirely Hondarribi Zuri. No one really knows what that is, and it may be more than one grape. In Wine Grapes, Jancis Robinson says that grapes called Hondarribi Zuri can actually be Courbu Blanc, Crouchen or Noah – all pretty obscure.
In its traditional form, Txakoli was more of a farmer’s wine than a commercial proposition. Because the wet conditions created increasing risk of rot as the grapes ripened, fruit was usually picked as soon as it was fermentable – usually at a potential alcohol of 9 to 10%. Fermentation was done in large, old, oak casks rather than in open vats, which trapped some of the CO2 of fermentation in the wine. After fermentation was done, the wine stayed in the vat until it was drawn off into a pitcher for serving. Then it was poured into tumblers from 8 to 18 inches of height, blowing off some of the retained gas and leaving tiny, pin-prick bubbles behind. Then down the hatch it went with local dishes like salt cod fritters, anchovies cured in oil and salt, or any other savory nibble the Basque call pintxos (and the rest of Spain calls tapas).
Txakoli has had a bit of resurgence in recent years from San Sebastien’s growing prominence as a culinary destination (it has more Michelin stars per capita than any city in the world) and increased interest in low alcohol, high acid wines to enjoy with seafood in Madrid, New York and beyond. In the winery, Txakoli today is most often made in large stainless steel tanks. The more careful producers cap the tanks to retain some natural CO2. Mass-scale wineries just bubble some in before bottling.
The Producer
We don’t know a lot about Mokoroa because they don’t make much wine, have no trouble selling it all, and haven’t felt the need to draw much attention to themselves beyond that. It’s a young winery founded in 2008 by local Jose Antonio Mokoroa (then in his 20s) and today employing his entire family.
Farming is sustainable and harvest by hand. Mokoroa has chosen to include a little Chardonnay in his vineyards to increase the wine’s body a touch and make it easier to enjoy solo as well as with food. The grapes come into the winery cold after harvest early in the morning. After being crushed and pressed, the juice is chilled to around 35 degrees to settle and allowed to start fermentation gradually in capped stainless steel tanks (retaining natural CO2). Then a short rest on the lees before bottling while cold with just enough sulfur to keep the wine fresh and stable.
The Wine – Mokoroa Getariako Txakolina 2022
At a high (for Txakoli) 11% alcohol and with 15% Chardonnay blended with the traditional Hondarribi Zuri grapes, you’d think this might be a softer, more gentle style of Txakoli. Nope. This is INTENSE, delivering tart, assertive flavors of pithy orange, green stone fruit and slaty stone with a gripping, almost eyewatering acidity on the back. The orange/lime citrus finish is your reward for persevering and the whole experience is so almost-painfully enjoyable you’ll rush to do it again. Try this with fried and nicely salted shellfish, super-creamy cheeses or a bowl of potato chips, and you’ll struggle to stop sipping before the bottle is gone. Pouring from a foot or two in height into a heavy tumbler adds to the ceremony, but is totally optional!
Wine #2
Garciarevalo Verdejo Rueda Finca Tres Olmos 2021
The Region and Its Wine
Rueda is kind of the “Google” of Spanish white wine regions. If you want to search for something on the web, you “Google it” regardless of what search tool you’re using. In Spain today, if you want a glass of clean, fresh, nicely fruited white wine, you ask for “Rueda” and that’s what you’ll get – whether it’s from Rioja, La Mancha or even Rueda itself. And all that happened in only a few decades – because before then, “Rueda” meant something else entirely.
Rueda lies along the Duero River to the west of Ribera del Duero and east of the Toro wine region in the province of Castilla y Leon. The region’s very low annual rainfall, blend of scorching hot summers and bitter cold winters, and fast draining soils of small stones in powdery earth make farming here very difficult. A few cereal crops and grapes are pretty much all that will grow.
So grapes were pretty much everywhere in Rueda for centuries through the 1880s. The unique blend of iron and lime in the soils disadvantaged red grapes, so virtually all plantings in Rueda were to the white Verdejo grape. Verdejo came to Spain from North Africa sometime in the 11th century and thrived on conditions here. Rueda was distinguished from most other white wines in Spain by its exceptional clarity, achieved by “fining” – dusting the surface of the wine with the local clay, which attracted stray proteins in the wine before settling to the bottom of the barrel or tank.
It was also very much NOT what we think of as white wine today! Instead it was made like Sherry, placed in partially filled barrels and allowed to oxidize slowly under a layer of cellar mold called flor. Over time winemakers improved the process by adding a little grape brandy to the barrel, bringing the alcohol up to 15% or so to stabilize the wine and further slow browning.
Waves of phylloxera hit Rueda from 1890 to 1922, wiping out around two-thirds of all vines. When replanting began in the 1930s, commercially minded growers abandoned Verdejo for the higher-production Sherry grape Palomino Fino. Demand for Rueda didn’t recover, though, and by the 1950s almost all Rueda was sold in bulk.
Verdejo plantings were limited to vines that survived phylloxera, and the grape was on its way to extinction until local winegrower Ángel Rodríguez Vidal decided that a return to Verdejo was the region’s only hope of regaining its stature. Plantings slowly increased until the 1970s, when Rioja producer Marqués de Riscal arrived in Rueda to start a new white wine venture. They brought with them temperature-controlled stainless steel tanks, a vision of making what we’d recognize today as “real” white wine, and a strong preference for Verdejo over Palomino.
And it worked. By 1980 other Rioja families were arriving in Rueda and the quality potential of the region was clear. The Rueda DO was created in 1980 with the requirement that at least 50% of any wine called “Rueda” be Verdejo, and plantings recovered from miniscule to around 85% of all Rueda vines today.
Growers soon found that Sauvignon Blanc also worked in Rueda (in a more citric, lemon/lime, way), and today it’s around 10% of all plantings. A generic Rueda now must be at least 50% Verdejo or Sauvignon. A wine labeled “Rueda Verdejo” must be at least 85% Verdejo.
The Producer
The Arévalo and Garcia families have lived in the small Rueda town of Matapozuelos for several hundred years and, like most, made their living growing grapes and selling them to wineries around the region. The heart of their holdings were several small parcels of Verdejo vines planted between the 1870s and 1920s. The phylloxera louse doesn’t like sand, so these bush-trained vines planted on their own roots continued producing without fail for 100 to 150 years. In 1991, Jose Antonio Arévalo and Benicio Garcia decided it was time to stop selling this amazing fruit and founded Garciarevalo to make wine themselves.
Jose Antonio’s son Antonio was not supposed to be part of this project. His mother told him to “stay out of the fields” and was proud when he earned his degree in economics. Antonio doesn’t report her reaction when he and his wife, Manuela, came back home to Matapozuelos to take over management while his brother Rodrigo cared for the vineyards Young Reyes Martínez Sagarra makes the wines.
Together the younger generation has deepened Garciarevalo’s commitment to creating jobs and great wines in their little town. Today there are 10 employees at the winery who average 37 years of age and have worked together an average of 10 years. The future is bright indeed.
The Wine – Garciarevalo Verdejo Rueda Finca Tres Olmos 2021
The Tres Olmos vineyard was replanted in the late 1990s and sits next to Garciarevalo’s oldest (150 years) vines. Both sites share the same sandy soils and cool temperatures courtesy of the Adaja and Eresma Rivers that come together here. It’s 100% Verdejo picked ripe and fresh by hand, crushed and pressed without sulfur, and allowed to ferment with the winery’s native yeast in stainless steel tanks. After fermentation it rests on the fine lees for six months or so with occasional stirring to add more creaminess and texture. It delivers glorious finger lime, tangerine and salty stone flavors that hang on your palate endlessly with a creamy texture and excellent salty-stone minerality. Marvelous value at 13.0% alcohol.
Wine #3
Casal de Arman Ribeiro Blanco 2020
The Region and Its Wine
Between Galicia’s more famous Rias Baixas (home of Albariño) and Ribeira Sacra (Mencia for reds, Godello for whites) regions, Ribeiro is easy to miss. Vines and wines have been the primary source of work and income here since Roman times, and the DO was created in 1957, 30 years before Rias Baixas or Ribeira Sacra. But only in the past few decades has the secret started to spread.
The region is defined by how four rivers – the Barbatino, Avia, Arnoia and Miño – come together and create a network of steep canyons and fertile valley floors. Like Rias Baixas to the west, the Atlantic Ocean influences the climate, cooling what would otherwise be a warm region. But Ribeiro gets half as much rain as Rias Baixas (a still substantial 37 inches per year) and has much more summer sunshine, allowing it to generate more ripeness and expand its grape palate beyond Alberiño.
The Romans introduced the vine to Ribeiro and carved out the terraces that still line the valleys’ steep sides. After the Romans, Cistercian monks arrived and continued to support vine growing and winemaking for their own use and to serve pilgrims on the Camino del Santiago’s southern route. Throughout its history and through the 1800s, the wines were mainly made in the Roman style, with grapes picked and dried in the sun and then used to make a sweet, sharply acidic wine that aged and travelled well. By the 17th and 18th centuries, fortification was sometimes used to protect the wines further, and a small-scale export business to the British Isles emerged.
The arrival of odium and phylloxera in the 1800s largely wiped out the vineyards, and World Wars, the Great Depression, and Spain’s internal turmoil took care of what was left of the commercial wine production industry. In recognition of Ribeiro’s historical prominence, it was awarded Galicia’s first DO (official wine region) in 1957. But realizing that potential was still years away. Only in the past 25 years has the work of estates like Coto de Gomariz, Luis Anxo Rodríguez and others begun to garner attention in Spain and the rest of the world.
The grapes here are common to much of Galicia and you’ll find Albariño, Godello, Torrontes, Loureiro and Lado across the region and in many wines. But an import from Portugal’s Vinho Verde region, Treixadura, is the most important grape in Ribeiro and the key to quality. It gives wonderful aromas and flavors of citrus, white flowers, and fresh apple to wine, but can lose its acidity if it gets too ripe. In Vinho Verde it’s picked as early as possible, keeping the acids but losing some flavor. In Ribeiro, the cooler climate allows full flavor development while retaining its snappy, mouthwatering bite.
The Producer
The story starts in the late 19th century when D. Emilio Vazquez returned to his family farm in Ribeiro after spending his youth in Chile, declaring his intention to create a world-class winery. The timing could not have been worse. But he and his family persevered as grape growers before finally creating their own winery, Casal de Arman, in 1990.
What is now the Gonzalez-Vasquez family owns around 50 acres of vines around the region. Most average 35 years of age, but there’s a small core of 80-plus-year-old vines. Four brothers and two sisters jointly run the vineyards, winery, and a small hotel and restaurant. The winemaker is Felicísimo Pereira, one of the most respected Ribeiro talents and president of the entire Ribeira DO.
The winery is committed to keeping Treixadura front and center, with two of their whites mainly Treixadura and two monovarietal. Farming is sustainable with minimal sprays, fermentation with native yeasts, and all but one of their wines are made entirely in steel tank to avoid overt oak influences. As Wine Advocate said a while back, “they seem to be going from strength to strength.”
The Wine – Casal de Arman Ribeiro Blanco 2020
One of the most delicious Spanish whites we’ve tasted in years. This blends 90% Treixadura with splashes of Godello and Albariño from vines up to 80 years old to create a white both silky and full of outstanding drive. Pineapple, nectarine, pink grapefruit and green melon flavors pick up a salty tang on the flowing, spicy, very long finish. A wonderful seafood and beach wine. Refreshing at just 13.0% alcohol.
Wine #4
Celler Del Roure Valencia Vermell 2019
The Region and Its Wines
Although there have been plenty of vines along Spain’s eastern coast for more than 1,000 years, Valencia remains better known for oranges and paella than wine. And, to the extent Valencia wine has been visible in the market, it’s mainly for high-production, low cost, value bottlings of Monestrell, Tempranillo, Cabernet and Chardonnay made, sold, and consumed in bulk.
Clariano is the southernmost sub-region of Valencia and one that shows the most promise for fine wine. Near the sea and cooling breezes, it’s mainly a white wine region with scattered plantings of red grapes. Moving inland and up in altitude, the soils get more poor, the days hotter and, sometimes, the nights colder. Mainly red wines here and mostly either thin (from over-cropping) or over-ripe (from the intense summer heat and sun).
The Producer
And then there are the wines of Pablo Calatayud. In the late 1990s, Pablo and his father decided to see if they could make some good wine in what was a sea of surrounding mediocrity. Neither had any experience, but Pablo took over a corner of his family’s furniture factory, bought some grapes, and began to give winemaking a try.
By 2005 or so he had a “real” winery full of gleaming stainless steel tanks and French oak barrels and new and purchased vineyards turning out pretty good Tempranillo, Merlot and Cabernet Sauvignon. Regular 90+ point Wine Advocate reviews followed and prospects were bright.
As the early 2000s went on, Pablo became more and more interested in the old Valencia grape Mando. Not much is known about Mando other than it was widely planted before phylloxera and then supplanted by international varietals and Garnacha Tintorera after. By 2000 or so it was nearly extinct. Pablo found a little and began playing with it, enjoying the freshness and verve it gave otherwise heavier wines. He began making a wine he called Maduresa to feature Mando, sometimes solo and sometimes blended with his other grapes.
In 2006 he was looking for more Mando and purchased an old vineyard full of the stuff that came with a 300-year-old winery. When he looked in the winery, he saw several hundred clay amphora (most with matching stone lids) buried in the floor – a kind of pre-stainless steel tank system. Realizing this was the truly old way of making Valencia wine, he began to identify the amphora still usable and trying them out for wine.
He liked the results a lot, especially when Mando was combined with Garnacha Tintorera – the Spanish name for Alicante Bouschet. Alicante was created by Frenchman Henri Bouschet as a cross of Grenache Noir and Petit Bouchet (itself a cross of Aramon and Teinturier du Cher) in 1866. Unlike most grapes, it has red flesh and gives red juice, so it was perfect for adding guts and color to the pale, overcropped wines of Languedoc-Rousillon. And, eventually, it did the same for mass-produced wines of Valencia, where it turned out not only to be useful but also quite good! Something about the Spanish sun and soil lets Alicante moderate yields a bit and give wonderfully fleshy, but not heavy wine with a very attractive herbal lift. And, as Pablo discovered, making it perfect for pairing with Mando!
Today Pablo is gradually grafting over his Tempranillo and international varietal vines to Monestrell, Garnacha Tintorera, and as many native Valencia varietals as he can find. Winemaking more and more is in amphorae (only 20 or so of the 100-plus have been used to date) with minimal sulfur in the winery and certified organic farming in the vineyards.
The Wine – Celler Del Roure Valencia Vermell 2019
From southern Valencia, this 70/30 blend of Garnacha Tintorera and Mando bursts at the seams with juicy raspberry fruit and a lift of sweet berry leaf that coats your palate and finishes long and satisfying at 13.0% alcohol.
“An entry-level red from local varieties, the 2019 Vermell is a blend of 70% Garnacha Tintorera and 30% Mandó from vines planted in 1996. It fermented with part of full clusters in stainless steel with indigenous yeasts and matured in 2,600-liter clay tinajas (amphorae) for four months. The vinification is very light, closer to a rosé than a red. This is very primary, juicy like biting into a ripe bunch of grapes. The palate is still mineral and serious, with a dry, chalky finish, quite unusual at this price point. Straightforward and easy to drink.” Wine Advocate 91 points
Wine #5
Juanvi Rubielos De Mora 2020
The Region and Its Wines
As Spain has industrialized and integrated into the world economy over the past 100 years, people young and old have flocked to big cities (especially Madrid) in search of jobs, leaving small towns shrinking or even abandoned entirely. The province of Teruel in southern Aragon (already the second least populated province in Spain) is full of villages that have met this fate. But not all. “¡Teruel Existe!” (Teruel Exists!) is the slogan of the citizens movement here, a cry to be remembered despite the decline.
As in most of Spain, vines have been here for centuries, but southern Aragon has never been much in terms of commercial viticulture and winemaking, mainly because much of the region is remote and mountainous. The village of Rubielos de Mora, where this wine comes from, is in the heart of the Sierra de Gúdar-Javalambre mountains, with what could be plantable land at around 1,000 meters elevation surrounded by higher peaks still.
“Could be” is the key phrase there. Absent special circumstances (of which there are many!), vines in Europe begin to struggle to ripen at around 900 meters of elevation. At 1,000 meters altitude and not so far from the sea, no one in Valencia (or otherwise in Spain) believed grapes could really ripen here. And for much of the past 2,000 years, they were probably right. But what climate change takes away in some places it gives a little in others. So perhaps vines in these mountains can make interesting wine?
The Producer
In the Teruel village of Rubielos de Mora, Vicente Alcañiz decided to do something to draw attention to his home. In 2008, his friend and restaurant owner Jesús Romero had planted the first vines to grow in the area for generations. So Vicente decided to create a winery to make wine from those grapes, creating a part-time hobby for both men.
When they retired, Vicente’s son Juan Vicente “Juanvi” Alcañiz came home from a winemaking job Calatayud (where he was making high-production wines like Las Rocas and Evodia) and decided to turn the winery into a full-time business. This will be a much smaller-scale operation, but one he hopes will uncover the potential of the mountain vineyards of Teruel and, perhaps, spark some development that will bring others home.
Juanvi started with the vines his father’s friend had planted in Rubielos de Mora and found other, older plantings near the town and in Baguena – another 1.5 hours’ drive further into the remote mountains. Even with few vineyards planted, vines outnumber people here and most are the kind of bush-trained Garnacha that, once it takes hold, can easily produce good wine for a century-plus. All are organically farmed – because who has money for chemical sprays?
Juanvi decided from the beginning to only make single-vineyard or single-village wines. All of the winemaking is the same. Whole bunches are hand harvested and then destemmed without crushing. The whole berries go into tanks where they start to ferment whenever the local yeast gets around to doing the job. After fermenting dry, the wines go into concrete tanks or older French oak casks to go through malolactic fermentation and, after a short rest, into bottle for us to enjoy.
The Wine – Celler Del Roure Valencia Vermell 2019
A blend of 70% Garnacha and 30% Tempranillo all grown in the village of Rubielos de Mora at 900 to 1,000 meters from vines planted as recently as 2008 and as long ago as the 1930s. It’s delicious and enlivening with a juicy feel and gentle, tangy bite. Early season blackberry and raspberry fruit aromas and flavors gain complexity from a note of light-roasted coffee bean and then satisfy with growing ripe raspberry flavors on the flowing finish. You’ll feel the impact of sunny days in the ripe flavors and cool/cold mountain nights in the zippy, mouthwatering finish. Delicious solo and with all kinds of foods from lentil salads to grilled seafood and roasted beef or lamb.
Wine #6
Bernabeleva Camino de Navaherreros Tinto 2021
The Region and Its Wines
In legal wine terms, Sierra de Gredos doesn’t exist. The vineyards that spread across the Gredos mountains 60 miles west of Madrid fall into three different provinces. So you’ll see the wines labeled Mentrida (near Toledo), Vinos de Madrid or simply as Vino de la Tierra de Castilla y Leon. Not Gredos.
But as soon as any conversation about “New Wave Spanish Wine” starts, the wines from the old-vine Garnacha vineyards of the Gredos mountains are the first examples cited. And for good reason – they are great! And distinctive, too.
The Sierra de Gredos range rises up to 2,500 meters, so around 1,900 meters above the 600 meter elevation Madrid plain. Madrid and its suburbs are too darn hot for quality winegrowing, but vines at 800 to 1,100 meters in Gredos still get more than enough sunshine and heat to ripen but also cool enough nights to rest and lock in freshness. Complex soils of granitic sand and schist/quartz mixes drain freely and are essentially devoid of nutrients, making the vines work hard. And hardworking vines make for very well-developed wines!
Not surprisingly, vines have dotted the Gredos mountains for centuries and were important in Madrid through the late 1400s. Once Spain was unified, “better” wine from Rioja and the rest of Iberia began to flow into the capital, and Gredos wines went into decline. By the late 20th century, most commercial wineries in Gredos had failed. Few new plantings took place and many hundreds of acres of vines were ripped up either in response to EU vine-pull schemes or to clear land for summer vacation homes for the wealthy of Madrid. What fruit remained went to co-ops to be turned into wine for local consumption or (usually unsuccessful) sales on the national bulk market.
Part of the failure of Gredos wines to sell outside the region was production costs. The old, bush-trained vines of Gredos had to be worked by hand (versus the mechanization possible further south) and produced tiny crops (compared to Garnacha in more fertile regions to the east). Gredos wasn’t cost-competitive.
And the wine Gredos Garnacha gives didn’t fit the “Parker paradigm” that ruled Spanish wines from the 1980s to early 2000s. Instead of the dark, fleshy, super-fruity wines of regions like Calatyud, Gredos Garnacha is…different. Master of Wine and Oxford Companion to Wine editor Jancis Robinson captures it nicely: “Gredos wines taste very burgundian, less extracted, more ethereal and lighter than the majority of Spanish Garnachas. The alcohol perception might be high but the wines manage to retain some lightness, generating a unique and recognizable style.”
At the same time, no two Gredos wines are exactly the same because these old vines (and the non-interventionist winemaking so common here) allow the character of each vineyard to shine through beautifully. Some are dark, meaty and earthy. Others super fragrant and almost delicate. All, though, are deeply authentic. And really, really yummy.
The Producer
When we first encountered Gredos Garnacha a few years ago, we had a pretty common response: “Great Garnacha from Gredos? Who knew?”
The answer is apparently a Madrid doctor and politician named Vincente Alvarez-Villamil. Somehow – we don’t have any details – way back in 1923, he concluded that there was potential to make great wine in Gredos. And so he purchased a plot of land in San Martín de Valdeiglesias at the foot of the Gredos mountains to plant vines and create a winery. He named it Bernabeleva, or “bear’s forest” in a nod to the Celtic-era images of bears carved into stones found across the region.
Both the winery and other sources are a bit coy, but since he was an active Republican, it’s probable that his fortunes took a turn for the worse following Franco’s and the Nationalists’ victory in 1939. But we do know that his family retained ownership of the land and continued caring for the vines he planted even if they did not make wine.
Until 2006. That’s when Vincente’s great-grandchild Juan Diez Bulnes looked at the now 80-year-old vines and the neighbors’ similar plantings and thought, “We can do better than sell these to the co-op.” Having no experience in the wine business, he turned to the man who was already recognized as the most talented vigneron in Spain: Raul Perez. Perez helped tighten up the farming, design the winery, and – critically – hire the gifted young Catalan, Marc Isart Pinos. Although Pinos has moved on to other projects now, his vision of place-based wines from organically farmed grapes continues to shape production here.
The Wine – Bernabeleva Camino de Navaherreros Tinto 2021
This is Bernabeleva’s “village” wine, showcasing the fruit from 40- to 80-year-old vines across the estate. The soils here are distinctive for Gredos, a tawny sand of decomposed granite that has exceptionally high acidity and very low nutrient levels and water retention. The hand-harvested fruit is partially destemmed (about 40% whole cluster) and fermented in steel before aging in large, old, oak vats for around 9 months. At a lower (for Gredos) 600 meters elevation, this is one of the warmer slices of Gredos, giving a darker tone to the wild-berry fruit. Savory accents of cured tobacco, clove, and brown spices add interest to a wine that finishes with excellent intensity and grip.
It’s hard to believe that until the 1990s, almost no one outside of the remote, northwestern corner of Spain called Galicia knew about Albariño.
This “pergola” system allows the grape bunches to hang down under the canopy and stay healthy due to frequent, drying, sea breezes. As a bonus, traditional farmers can also double up on use of their limited land by raising chickens, pigs, or other foraging animals under the vines!
With such tiny production levels and a loyal customer base (like us – we sell more of Silvia’s wines than anyone!), she doesn’t have to present her wines to critics for review. But somehow Josh Raynolds of Vinous got his hands on a bottle of her “entry level” AiAiAi 2014. He wrote:
This week, we move inland to Bierzo, and the wines of one of Pedro Rodriguez’ mentors, Raul Perez.
“The Best Winemaker in the World?
Mencía is high in anthocyanins (red pigment), so its wines typically show a deep red color even when grown in cooler vineyards. And it’s high in terpenoids, aroma compounds that deliver bold scents of fresh flowers, raspberry, strawberry, pomegranate and sweet cherry. A bold dose of cracked peppery spice, a touch of something leafy green (think Cab Franc), and a dollop of crushed gravel minerality round out the fascinating aromatic and flavor profile.
Silvia Puig was pretty much born into the wine business – her father, Joseph Puig, is a longtime restaurateur, export manager for Spain’s Miguel Torres and founder of Torres’s operation in Chile. Silvia followed Joseph into the trade, learning winemaking at school and while working at properties in Bordeaux and Spain (including Vega Sicilia’s Alion winery).
For a place that grows a quintessential summer and seafood wine, Galicia, the area in Northwest Spain most known for Albariño, is actually rather gray and gloomy, with weather that always feels damp and gray even when it’s not raining. Called Green Spain for its lusher and cooler climate than the rest of Spain’s hotter, drier, more red wine-focused wine country, the Rias Baixas DO specializes in this fruity white grape.
Chain Bridge Cellars 