Wine of the Week – Txakoli and a final fling of summer

Ameztoi with Getaria in the background, photo courtesy of the winery.

I have just returned from a wonderful trip to Australia and New Zealand and will be telling you about some of my experiences over there in the future.

In the meantime, I have returned to some very warm weather and so sought out some lovely fresh white wine to enjoy with some seafood so that I could properly celebrate this last fling of summer.

The wine I found was a Txakoli – Chacolí in Castilian Spanish – which comes from the País Vasco, Spain’s Autonomous Basque Region. Txakoli is a wine style that I love and have written about before, but until recently it has been considered somewhat obscure. Well now it is becoming much better known and easier to find and I discovered that Marks & Spencer carry a rather a good one. In fact I liked it so much that I made it my Wine of the Week.

Wine map of Spain, see Getariako Txakolina on the Atlantic coast to the east of Bilbao – click for a larger view.

2015 Alaia Txakoli
Amesguren
PDO / DO Getariako Txakolina
País Vasco
Spain

There are three Txakoli DOs, but, much as I like some other Txakoli wines – especially the great Itasas Mendi 7 from DO Bizkaiko Txakolina near Bilbao, try it if you can – UK stockists are here, US stockists here – I am especially drawn to the Getariako Txakolina that is grown on the wild coastline around the beautiful fishing village of Getaria 30km west of San Sebastian. Getaria is a wonderful place almost totally dedicated to hedonism, bars and restaurants line the streets. Much of the cooking is done outside, so the smell of grilling fish is a constant and guaranteed to make you hungry. In many ways it works to go there on your way to San Sebastian as it prepares you for the delights to come.

Getaria harbour.

Fish being cooked in Getaria.

One of the great pintxo bars in Getaria, note the sea urchin and octopus.

If you are a hedonist and like food and wine, then San Sebastian – Donostia in Basque – is a place you must visit. It is teeming with bars and life, the best tapas in Spain – they call them pintxos – and loads of Michelin star restaurants too, if that is your thing.

Txakoli should really be poured from a great hight into a tumbler – get a Txakoli pourer if you can.

My Txakoli being poured in San Sebastian, note the green Txakoli pourer in the end of the bottle, it helps to aerate the wine and they also use them for cider in the Basque country.

For more detail on Txakoli, read the piece that I wrote for Catavino a few years ago, by clicking here.

This particular wine is very clever sourcing by M&S, because the producer, Amesguren, are actually the people who make Ameztoi, which along with Txakolin Gorria, is considered the best producer of Getariako Txakolina. So we know the provenance of this wine is good and this wine has a better label than Ameztoi!

This wine is made from the local Hondarrabi Zuri – I wonder why nobody grows that anywhere else? – and has a light natural fizz from the fermentation, which makes it taste really fresh.

And that is the secret with this stuff, keeping it fresh, light and zesty. The nose is floral and citric and has a touch of the seashore and something saline about it. Then it just dances across your palate, light, fresh, zingy, spritz and yet with waves of flavour, lots of light flavour. Green apples, grapefruit, nettles, lime, blackcurrant leaf are all there, but in a sort of sketched in way, rather than in a fully formed picture. Instead this wine wins with a thrilling mineral and crisp acid finish that just whets your appetite for more – more of this, some seafood and anything else. What’s more it only has 10.5% alcohol, so won’t addle too many brain cells either.

A swankier pintxo bar in San Sebastian.

Try it with grilled prawns, scallops, oysters, sea bream, sea bass, sushi, a Chinese takeaway or on its own, anyway you have it, it’s a lovely wine – 89/100 points.

Available in the UK for £10 per bottle from Marks & Spencer – right now, September 2016 it is only £8 a bottle.
As far as I am aware, Alaia Txakoli is not available in the US, but Ameztoi is well distributed – for stockists click here.

La Cepa, perhaps the classic pintxo bar in San Sebastian.

 

Wine of the Week 52 – a full year of Wines of the Week, so something rather special

Oddly I rather feel as though I have really achieved something by publishing a Wine of the Week every week for the last year, as well as other articles.

I hope that some of you have enjoyed reading about the wines and even tried some of them.

To celebrate the first anniversary of my Wine of the Week I have decided to feature something rather special and delicious. It is an English sparkling wine, which in case you were not aware, is something that England does rather well.

Ridgeview Vineyards, photo by kind permission of James Pike Photography. Contact James Pike on 01273 731745, contact@jimpix.com, jimpix.com. Address, Studio F, Stockwell Lodge, Conway Street, Hove, BN3 3LW.

2010 Ridgeview Marksman Blanc de Blancs Brut
Ridgeview Vineyards
Ditchling
East Sussex

Ridgeview is one of the leading English wine estates and do not seemm to have put a foot wrong since they were established by Mike and Chris Roberts in 1994. English wine had been on the cusp of achieving fame ever since the early 1980s and Ridgeview, along with a few other well known vineyards like Nyetimber, really put English wine on the map.

For a start they specialised. They realised that not only was the climate of southern England remarkably similar to that of Champagne, but that the soils were actually identical. The same start of chalk that makes Champagne what it is, comes up under the channel in Sussex. So Ridgeview set out to make world class sparkling wines right from the start.

What’s more, they had an angle, they called their wines Cuvée Merret in honour of Christopher Merret. Merret was a fascinating man, a Fellow of the Royal Society, he was a physician and scientist who lived from 1614 to 1695. He did all sorts of amazing things, but his chief claim to fame comes from a paper that he presented to the Royal Society in 1662. In this he described adding sugar to a wine to make it sparkling, which is the basis of the Traditional Method process as used in the Champagne region to make the wine sparkling. This presentation predates any such method being used in Champagne itself by some 30 years. So, it’s official, the English made fizz before the French.

It takes guts to even attempt to make wine in England. You need to be dedicated and singleminded, probably being boozy minded helps too as it is not easy. Technically speaking as we lie north of 50˚, we are just too cold in these islands to ripen grapes properly, but happily for us the Gulf Stream tempers conditions enough to make it just about possible to achieve a crop of ripe grapes in most years – but not every year by any means.

I have tasted a good few Ridgeview wines in my time and they always impress me. They seem to have an elegance and a purity about them which is exciting and shows just how good English wine can be. Their vineyards are all in the South Downs National Park and they planted them with the classic Champagne grapes of Chardonnay, Pinot Noir and Pinot Meunier – it is astonishing to think that the Champagne region is just 88 miles to the south. Just like in Champagne itself, the cool climate and (hopefully) sunny Autumns, slowly build up ripeness in the grapes, while retaining crisp acidity, which is vital in a good sparkling wine.

Like all English wines, these are artisan wines, hand crafted wines that are produced in tiny quantities, so they are often quite hard to buy. Luckily for us Ridgeview have produced a wine for Marks and Spencer and not only is it more widely available as a consequence, but it is quite superb.

Called Marksman Brut, it is a Blanc de Blancs, so made just from Chardonnay grapes and to allow complex flavours to develop, it was aged for 36 months on the lees – the dead yeast cells left over from the second fermentation.

The wine is quite pale with a persistent mousse of fine bubbles. The aromas are of green apples, minerals,m a touch of ozone and a light dusting of croissant crumbs. At first the palate is very taunt and pure, but it then broadens out to a richer mouthfeel with white peach, tangy apricot, a touch of apples and a pure, almost saline quality, like a touch of the sea. The acidity is crisp and refreshing, while the mousse is firm, yet creamy. This wine is quite superb, with a lightness of touch and a real feel of freshness, but it is less austere, softer and fruitier than you first think. All in all it is a triumph and although a wine like this can never be cheap, it is great value for money – 91/100 points.

Available in the UK from Marks and Spencer for £21.00 a bottle. Stockists for other Ridgeview wines are available here.
Some Ridgeview wines are available in the US, stockist information is available here.

Get patriotic and try this great wine as a perfect aperitif, picnic wine, or garden party tipple. It’s perfect with shellfish, white meat, fish or anything light, actually it’s even good with Thai and Chinese food.

 

A steal from Toledo

I always think it is such a pity that most supermarkets and wine shops seem to think that Spanish wine stops and starts with Rioja. This makes most consumers think that Spanish wine is all about Rioja. It is apparently now very hard to sell Spanish wines  in the UK that do not have the word Rioja on the label.

So, imagine how excited I was when putting together a Spanish wine tasting session for a wine club recently to find this splendid wine, it is interesting and different as it comes from an area not historically associated with wine, but an estate in Toledo that has its own D.O. – indeed it was the first of the 7 Vinos de Pago to be created, what is more it is easily available, great value for money and is rather good.

Marqués de Griñon Caliza 2005

D.O. Dominio de Valdepusa

Syrah-Petit Verdot