A week with Torres

I recently spent a week on the Miguel Torres Wine Course in Vilafranca del Penedès and Barcelona, so thought I should pull my thoughts together and tell you about the experience.

One of the highlights was meeting Miguel A Torres, he really is a giant figure in the wine business. Perhaps as my early experiences of wine were all in Spain he looms larger to me than my British counterparts, but I well remember my first taste of Viña Esmerelda and being astonished by how very different it was from anything else in Spain – still broadly true.

It is impossible to exaggerate Torres’s influence on Spanish wine. He helped introduce all sorts of modern techniques that we all now take for granted – stainless steel tanks, cold fermentation and the use of international grapes were all either introduced by him or helped on their way by him. It is impossible to be sure as he is genuinely very modest and  seemed to always deny being the first at anything, saying that someone else did it before him. However, I have noticed that the genuinely successful are often not the first to do something, but are usually the first to perfect it – which would be very Torres.

Crisp wines are so yesterday!

All my working life the wine world has described certain wine styles as crisp, so widespread is it that I have even heard these wines incorrectly referred to as ‘crispy’ by those who are unaware of the linguistic differences.

Most of us know what crisp means; fresh, firm and steely with a hard-edged green apple or lemon acidity. Basically it means a wine where the fruit is less dominant than the fresh dryness and the sharp (crisp) acidity, so these wines leave the palate clean, refreshed and a little sour rather than leaving the faintly sweet deposit of fruity wines. At least that is how I explain it to myself.

Minerality in wine – flight of fantasy, fact or terroir?

The Mosel - slate slopes and a cool climate

Wine tasters and wine trade people often talk about minerality in wine – possibly too much, but I have always assumed that it means something, even though spell checkers hate the word. However I often come across people who find it hard to understand the term in reference to wine and yesterday I met someone who positively hates it.

Minerality to me describes many of those characteristics in a wine that are not fruity – yes there are some – especially in youth before the aged leathery or honeyed characters take over. Some wines are blindingly mineral, like the terpene/petrol notes of Riesling and a few other grapes. Some are chalky, in others you would swear that you can taste granite, iron, flint or slate, while others are more vaguely mineral. It is slightly confused, because scientific research seems to say that the vine does not deliver actual mineral flavours from the soil in which it grows – so where does it come from? It is possible that it is sometimes the acidity and sometimes the sensation of the tannins, but is it also possible that it is an utter flight of fantasy? A case of grasping at straws?

Jean León – wine & stardust

Even if you have never heard of him, Jean León is one of those people who enjoyed an infectiously interesting life. He was a Spaniard, from Cantabria, but by way of Barcelona, then France and stowing away on a ship to the United States he lived the American dream and created a legend.

Frankly he was also one of those people who seemed to either have good luck or knew how to make it. He survived with a series of menial jobs before joining the US Army to serve in the Korean War, and it was this service that entitled him to US nationality.

After finishing his stint in the army León got a job as a waiter at Hollywood’s trendy Villa Capri restaurant that was part owned by Frank Sinatra and Joe di Maggio. He must have been an affable and outgoing soul who made friends easily, as he developed a close friendship with James Dean and together they agreed to create a new luxury restaurant in Beverley Hills – La Scala. Dean died before it opened, but León went ahead and the new restaurant quickly became the Hollywood place for celebrity diners.

Jean León later created a boutique winery in Spain’s Penedès region and was the first to use Cabernet Sauvignon and Chardonnay vines there in the early 1960s. This bodega is now part of the Torres group as León and Miguel Torres were such great friends and admirers of each others work that when Jean León became ill in the 1990s Torres bought the winery. His daughter Gigi meanwhile took over the restaurant and runs it to this day.

The view from the Jean León winery

It is a terrific winery and I was very taken with some of the wines I tasted there while attending the Miguel Torres Wine Course, it is that rarity in Spain, a true estate – or pago and the attention to detail shows. They produce some very good Chardonnays indeed, both the top end barrel fermented Jean León Viña Gigi (vineyard named for his daughter) Chardonnay and the fresher Jean León Petit Chardonnay were excellent quality.

St Estèphe – a love renewed

I well remember the first time I tried a half decent claret, one that did not have the word on the label that is. How sophisticated I felt and what a revelation it seemed. I shied away from the costly 1982 Sarget de Gruaud-Larose – £4.99 a bottle, how wish I had bought 20 cases or so – and kept to the more modest Château Meyney 1977 Cru Bourgeois St Estèphe at £3.99.

That experience, which was a good one, was pivotal in fixing my view of red Bordeaux wines. From that moment one I knew I liked them, respected them and desired them, sadly I could seldom ever afford them and it has remained that way ever since. Bear in mind too that was in the days when a bad vintage, like 1977, bore no relation to a good one at all – not like now.

Miguel Torres – Catalan wine legend

Many of you will know that I have a deep love of Spain, Spanish culture and Spanish wine. Well no one can possibly have the experience of Spanish wine that I have had without coming across Miguel Torres. Indeed some of the very first quality Spanish wines I ever tried were from Bodegas Torres.

I well remember my first taste of the revolutionary Viña Esmerelda, Gran Viña Sol Green Label (called Fransola now) and Gran Coronas Black Label 1975 (now called Mas La Plana). With wines like this Torres were responsible for a real step change in quality and outlook in the whole Spanish wine industry.

I have long been an admirer of Miguel Torres himself, he is a giant of the wine business and holds a place in Spain akin to that held by Robert Mondavi in Napa Valley.

Well, I have been honored by being invited on the 23rd Miguel Torres Wine Course which will run next week in Vilafranca del Penedès near Barcelona, where Torres are based. I am especially looking forward to the sessions led by Miguel Torres himself.

I will blog about some of my experiences there if I get the time and the connection.

Wines of Andalucia: On the Rise

Bodegas Barranco Oscuro in the Alpujarras

Recently I have become aware that Spain’s most unlikely seeming wine region is on the rise and producing wine that is worthy of attention. I wrote a piece about it that has been published on Catavino – you might like it…click here to read my article