Strawberry Fields Forever

Les Freses de Jesús Pobre.

Spain never lets me down. I love wine from all around the world and am passionate about wines from everywhere and about the countries and regions that spawn them, but I always return to my first love – Spain.

I am only in this business because of my misspent youth in Spain and the healthy relationship – I hope – that gave me to alcohol. It certainly made me like wine, but I am not sure that is entirely the same thing.

Over the years I have seen huge changes in Spanish wine. Once upon a time only the reds were really good and even then only from one or two regions – principally Rioja of course. During my 34 years in the wine business the wine revolution has spread out throughout Spain and produced startlingly good results.

Rioja has got better and better and high quality reds are now made in more and more unlikely places and the reds of the south are now at least as exciting as the more traditional regions of northern Spain. Look out for red wines from Valencia and Utiel Requena made from the Bobal grape and wines from Alicante and Jumilla made from Monastrell – aka Mourvédre and Mataro.

Torres led the way with modern whites in the 1960s and ’70s and today the white wines of Spain are amongst the most exciting of all. Galicia, Rueda and Rioja all make world class white wines today, but so too do some much less well known areas like Terra Alta in Catalunya which produces blindingly good Garnacha Blanca / Garnatxa Blanc / Grenache Blanc. Albillo is making some stunning white wines in Castilla y León, while Merseguera is the white grape to watch in the Comunidad Valenciano, especially Alicante.

One of the really lovely things that I have noticed in Spain in recent years is the way passionate people are training as winemakers, working in the industry for a while to gain experience and then buying or renting small parcels of vines in order to craft very personal wines. These projects are really thrilling and you can see them up and down the country, budding winemakers nurturing forgotten vineyards and coaxing them back to life – or sometimes planting them from scratch – and producing wonderfully expressive wines. The classic examples of course are Enrique Basarte and Elisa Úcar’s Domaine Lupier in Navarra and Charlotte Allen’s Piritia in DO Arribes on the Western fringes of Castilla y León, but such micro-wineries can be found everywhere and they often give interesting impetus to regions that in the past have often been very over reliant on the local cooperatives. In much of Spain from the 1940s onwards big production was the thing, so the cooperatives churned out huge volumes of palatable – by local standards – wine to slake the thirst of local workers with almost no regard to quality as we would understand it today. All that is changing of course, but anything that can help that is all to the good and the creation of new, quality focused estates even in unlikely corners of Spain can only help.

The view from the family home, Casa Tranquilla – photo by Hilary Sadler, my brother. That mountain is the Montgó, you will note that we can see the sea between the land and the sky. Las Freses is perhaps half a kilometre round the terraced hill in the foreground, behind and to the left of the tree in the front and centre of the photograph you can just about make out the road that curves around to the crossroads.

I have family in Spain so visit rather a lot. Indeed my family have had a holiday home in the Xàbia, or Jávea, area of the Comunidad Valenciana since 1965, the year I was born and the year that I first went to Spain. Initially we had an apartment on the Arenal, or beach area, and I well remember standing on the balcony and looking out at orange groves and vineyards as far as my eyes could see. Today all you see is more blocks of flats – thankfully for the view they are all low rise. In the early 1970s my father had a villa built near the tiny village of Jesús Pobre some 12 kilometres or so inland and that is where he now lives.

Map of Spain’s wine regions. I have marked Javea and Jesús Pobre.

Last week was my father’s 91st birthday and so I popped out to help him celebrate.

Just around the corner from our house – and down a very steep hillside – is a crossroads. When I was a boy that crossroads was in a deep pine forest. As more and more villas were built, more and more land was cleared for more building, so the pine trees were cut down on our side of the road with a view to putting up some villas. Things move slowly in Spain and permission was not forthcoming, so as a stopgap the owner turned the land into a strawberry farm, which it remained for many years.

In the meantime there were quite a lot of vineyards around that grew Moscatel – Muscat – to produce the local Moscatel de la Marina, – also see here – a lightly fortified Muscat made from overripe and partially dried grapes. Slowly people lost the taste for this wine and the vineyards often fell into disuse, almost never grubbed up, but abandoned.

Les Freses complete with the Montgó and all that remains of the pine trees behind.

A few years ago the land around our village was declared agricultural land and no new building is permitted. The owner could no longer develop it and sold it to Mara Bañó who from 2009 has transformed it into a vineyard. She has also built a beautiful and superbly equipped micro-winery –  I have seen smaller, but not many – that is just full of the most wonderful new equipment and made me itch to have a go at winemaking.

In order to show continuity with the past Mara named her new estate and winery Les Freses de Jesús Pobre. I assume that les freses is the Valenciano word for strawberries, but Valenciano is usually the same or similar to Catalan and I understand that the Catalan word for strawberries is maduixes – so who knows.

I had wanted to try the wines ever since I heard about them, so dropped in and had a chat with Mara and tried all her wines that were available.

What I found amazed me. This area has no real tradition of producing quality wines at all and almost no tradition of producing dry wine, yet here were world class wines being made in a place that is never mentioned in any of the wine books.

As you might expect from a small estate made in a dry place by a young and passionate wine maker, these are “natural“ wines grown organically, fermented spontaneously with the wild yeast and have as little intervention as possible and as little sulphur used as is possible.

Mara does grow some black grapes and so a red wine and a rosé are in the pipeline, but the focus is the whites for the moment, which I think suits the region, its food and climate.

Given their diet – this near the coast anyway – it is strange how resistant the Spanish have always been to white wines. They even have a saying “si no es tinto, no es vino“, which means if it isn’t red then it isn’t wine and until very recently they lived by that. Nowadays the sheer quality of Spanish white wines seems to have broken that down somewhat and they are beginning to stock pretty good ranges of white in the shops and supermarkets. Even my favourite restaurant in Valencia, which used to only list 1 white wine, compared to 25 reds, has now greatly expanded its offering.

Young wire trained vines at Les Freses with the Montgó behind – photo courtesy of the winery.

Mara only grows one white grape at the moment, the traditional Moscatel de Alejandría – Muscat of Alexandria –  but she makes three very different wines from it. The estate forms a single, triangular shaped block on the lower, very gentle slopes of the iconic Montgó mountain which rears up very near our house like a huge squatting elephant. It rises to 753 metres above sea level and dominates the area. It runs west to east, so vines on its south face sit in a perfect sun trap. The soils are pretty rocky limestone with rich red clay too.

The wines

2017 Les Freses Blanc Moscatell Sec

100% Moscatel, harvested by hand and sent to the sorting table for a rigorous selection and manual destemming. Spontaneous fermentation in stainless steel, with its own yeasts and then aged for 4 months on the lees in 54 litre glass demijohns – that is very traditionally Spanish but usually only seen for rancio wines and dessert wines.

This is the standard wine from the estate and it is very appealing, lively with lifted notes of peach, peach skin, almonds and sea salt.

The palate is pristine, salty, mineral and ever so slightly smoky – those lees? – with a silky texture, taut peach and succulent grape flavours, enough acidity and freshness to balance it and that saline touch on the finish. Perfect with sea bass and much else I am sure – 90/100 points.

€10 per bottle locally.

It is at this point that I should admit that I generally avoid dry Muscat wines. I do not like it as a grape generally, finding it cloying, flowery and low in acidity. That being said I loved this, it really worked and I drank it all up!

Bush vines at Les Freses.

2017 Les Freses Àmfora Blanc Sec

This is the top dry white from the estate with a careful selection of the best fruit and then fermented in a big tinaja, which is like a big earthenware pot like a Qvervi in Georgia. They are very traditional in Spain and were widely used up until the 1970s/1980s. In those days they were usually buried in the ground and fell out of favour because they were usually very old and hard to clean so spoiled the wine in many cases. Nowadays they are much better made and easier to clean.

The nose is less vivacious and more dense but with lovely notes of almond and delicate orange.

This wine is much more about the palate and is more concentrated with a gorgeous silky texture that flows very attractively across your senses. There is dense stone fruit, the acidity feels more vibrant, there is a twist of orange peel, those almonds are toasted this time. It has that salinity and a tangy, vibrant feel that balances the viscosity and richness. This wine is amazingly intense and fundamentally dry, but the intensity of the fruit almost makes you think it is slightly sweet – so it feels sort of sweet and sour. A great wine – 92/100 points.

€20 per bottle locally.

2017 Les Freses Dolç

I actually do not know how this wine is made. It is not fortified, or doesn’t taste it anyway, so I think the grapes are late harvested and slightly dried.

It has a lovely golden caramel colour with aromas of light raisins, dates and figs, rich nuts, buttery caramel and orange peel.

The palate is sweet without being cloying. Caramel, creamy orange, fig, cinder toffee, intensely ripe apricots and fleshy peaches all swirl around the palate. A touch of bitterness and sweet spice keeps it balanced and accentuates the complexity. A stunning dessert wine of great class and complexity – 93/100 points.

€17 per bottle locally.

The carob tart that I enjoyed with the Les Freses Dolç in Pedro’s, the main bar and restaurant in the small village of Jesús Pobre. I had never tasted carob before, except for nibbling on the beans plucked from the trees growing around our house when I was a boy, it was very good and perfect with the wine.

These are wines of the highest order, yet made quite casually by a single passionate person. They are produced in a place long written off by the great and the good of wine production and because they come from my spiritual home I was pretty emotional about them and more delighted to taste them than you can imagine. Do try them if you get the area – and I know lots of people do – you can buy them at the winery and in the local wineshops – such as this one: Vins i Mes, but not supermarkets. Many of the local restaurants – including Pedro’s – have them too.

I was put in mind of this quote by Matt Kramer the American wine writer: “The greatest wines today are not, paradoxical as this may sound, the so-called great wines”. The wines that excite me most and give me the most pleasure often come from the unlikely corners and forgotten places.

Wine of the Week 65 – a delicious, fresh tasting Grenache

My Wine of the Week this week is a really exciting red Grenache, or as it comes from Spain I should say Garnacha. Grenache is a Spanish grape and so should really have the Spanish name of Garnacha.

I have come to Grenache relatively late, but am making up for it as I am now tasting many delicious and exciting examples. Of course the grape is largely responsible for the famous wines of Châteauneuf-du-Pape in France’s southern Rhône, but Spain makes a lot of very fine examples too. The most famous and widely praised must be from Priorat in Catalunya, but regular readers of these pages might be familiar with he sublime wines of Domaine Lupier in Navarra.

Anyway I have recently tasted a Garnacha that is actually not produced in any recognised wine region, so it is simply labelled as a Vino de la Tierra, similar to Vin de Pays in France – my second Spanish Vino de la Tierra Wine of the Week in a row. Don’t let that lowly classification put you off though, the wine is superb.

Map of Spain showing approximate position of the Moncayo Massif – click for a larger view.

2014 La Garnacha Salvaje del Moncayo
Vino de la Tierra Ribera de Queiles
Garnachas de España
Aragon, Spain

This wine is part of the Garnachas de España project which is attempting to reclaim garnet as Spain’s noble grape, to popularise it and to also bring Spain’s unused old Garnacha vines – the wild (salvaje) vineyards – back to productive life. Many vineyards were abandoned after phylloxera, some were considered too difficult to farm once tractors and other automative advances came in, in some cases families simply left the land and moved to the city. Whatever the reason, and there are many, old unused vines can be found all over most wine producing areas. This project is seeks to use this wonderful resource, just as Domaine Lupier did in Navarra.

The vineyards are grown on the north facing slopes of the Moncayo massif which is located between the Zaragoza in Aragon and Soria in Castilla y León – it straddles the Castile/Aragon border. The vineyards are high on infertile rocky soils that contain a lot of slate. So conditions are relatively cool with big temperature drops between night and day, even at the height of summer.

The grapes were handpicked and fermented in stainless steel tanks to retain freshness and fruit. The wine then ages in new French oak for 5 months, which smooths out the wine and softens the tannins.

The colour is relatively light and a vibrant crushed raspberry and blackberry colour. The nose is dominated by the fruit, bright fresh raspberry and cherry notes together with a twist of orange and soft spices. The palate is soft and lively with lots of freshness and crunchy red fruit. The tannins are soft and smooth with just a gentle smear of chalkiness on the finish and there is a little touch of minerality too. This is a happy, happy wine, soft, joyous and utterly delicious – 88/100 points.

Serve lightly chilled with almost any Mediterranean style food and you will have a very good time. I think it would be wonderful with Turkish lamb kebabs, it would even be nice to drink on its own.

Available in the UK from £6.95 to £10.49 a bottle from The Wine Society and Majestic Wine Warehouse.
US stockist information is available here.

 

 

Wine of the Week 64 – A is for Albillo

Those of you who read these pages regularly will know that I love finding new things, whether that is new wine regions, new wines styles, new grape varieties or producers. So, I am very excited by my new Wine of the Week.

It is a Spanish white wine – Spain seems to be turning out really exciting white wines right now – made from a grape variety called Albillo. I actually tasted it a while ago, but had failed to tell you all about, so I am rectifying that today.

Albillo is pretty rare, only being planted in Ávila, Galicia, Madrid, Ribera del Duero (where currently it is blended into red wines although the DO is about to start to make whites too) and Burgos Province. I actually mentioned the grape 6 years ago in my piece about the wines of Madrid here.

As with so many Spanish grapes, we have to be very careful as the same name can be used in all sorts of places for different grape varieties. Albillo is no exception as Albillo Real and Albillo Mayor are actually different grapes. My wine of the week is made from Albillo Mayor, which just to muddy the waters a little more and to show how confused wine names can be, is also sometimes known as Turruntés (in Rioja), Túrruntez, Abillo, Blanca del País. And if you were wondering if that means that it is related to Torrentes, well it isn’t. It seems that none of the Spanish grapes called Torrontes, or similar names, are related to the Torrentes of Argentina, although it just might be related to the Albillo Criollo grown in the Canary islands.

Excitingly though, it does seem that Albillo Mayor is one of Tempranillo’s parents, the other being Benedicto, an obscure grape that is no longer grown commercially.

Anyway, whatever Albillo it is, I love this wine so much that I have made it my Wine of the Week.

Map of Spain showing approximate position of Ermita del Conde – click for a larger view.

The Roman Theatre theatre at Clunia Sulpica.

2013 Ermita del Conde Albillo Centenario
Bodegas Ermita del Conde
Vino de la Tierra de Castilla y León
Burgos, Castilla y León, Spain

Ermita del Conde is a small estate that was created in 2006 by Marta Gomendio, but new though it is the secret here is that they largely use very old vines, which give wines of more depth with lower yields. I am also told that old vines ripen at lower sugar levels than younger vines, so give better balance and often slightly lower alcohol too.

The winery is in the little village of Coruña del Conde, which is outside the Ribera del Duero DO and so the wines have no DO, but have to be labelled as Vino de la Tierra de Castilla y León, the equivalent of the French Vin de Pays. Coruña del Conde is roughly 60 km east of Valladolid, 60 km south west of Logroño and 40 km west of Soria. The estate takes its name from the medieval chapel, ermita or hermitage next door.

Just 2 km away are the magnificent ruins of the old Roman city of Clunia Sulpica, which was briefly the capital of Rome and for a long time the most important Roman city in northern Iberia. In fact the whole area is steeped in history, with Roman bridges, medieval churches and castles dotted about the landscape – this area was for long a defensive frontier, so castles are everywhere.

Marta now owns 16 hectares of old vines that she has purchased off the local farmers and nurtured back to a productive life, this story by the way is replicated across Spain – and elsewhere. Most of the grapes are Tempranillo, or Tinto Fino as it is known in these parts. I have not tasted the red wines, but hope to do so soon.

Apart from the age of the vines, the other thing that makes for great quality here is the height. These vines grow at over 900 metres above sea level. This altitude tempers the extreme summer heat ensuring the wines retain their natural acidity and delicacy. Also, everything here is done by hand with the utmost care, and it shows, what’s more the winery is incredibly well appointed with the most modern equipment that treats the grapes very gently.

This wine is made from vines that are over 100 years old – Albillo Centenario. It is fermented in 3000 litre French oak vats or foudres. Fermentation is spontaneous using the wild yeasts and once complete the wine is aged in the oak on the lees for a further 6 months.

The nose is pretty gentle and clean with delicate aromas of nuts, cream and lemon curd. It is on the palate that you find the excitement. The texture is so lovely that you find yourself smiling and looking around to see what others think as you drink it. It is creamy, yes, but also silky and suave. The flavours are mouth filling too, with apples, lemon, lemon rind, nectarine, almonds and a little butter. I swear there are hints of more tropical pineapple and coconut too as well as a beautifully balanced seam of acidity and mineral characters. The oak is very subtle and beautifully integrated.

I originally tasted the 2011, which was more developed, honeyed and nutty, while this is fresher and more lightly creamy. I like them both, but this wins for sheer drinkability, buy lots as the bottles empty very quickly indeed – 92/100 points.

This is a serious white wine of great quality and deserves to be much more famous. I drank it with pork, but am sure that it would be equally good with poultry or a pice of fish.

Available in the UK for around £11 a bottle from The Wine Society.

 

Wine of the Week 57 – a delicious Priorat that will not break the bank

The beautiful landscape of Priorat. Photo courtesy of Oficina de Turisme del Priorat.

As many of my regular readers know, I love Priorat wines. It is without question Catalunya’s most prestigious wine region and apart from Rioja is the only area to be granted Spain’s highest wine classification; D.O.Ca or D.O.Q. in Catalan – Denominación de Origen Calificada.

Everything about this tiny region appeals to me. It feels very wild and isolated when you are there, it’s quite a journey just getting to it in fact. There is only one road and as it winds up into the mountains the terrain is ruggedly beautiful and the views are staggering. Miguel Torres once told me that it was completely different world in Priorat, and he was quite right.

Wine map of Spain – click for a larger view – non watermarked PDF versions are available by agreement

Once you are up in this amazing place, the air is clear and it feels very peaceful – I would urge anyone to visit, even if you are not that keen on wine. The villages are all lovely – there are no towns exactly – and while there are no hotels, there are some superb restaurants.

What really sets this lovely region apart though is the wine. Priorat specialises in blends, usually based on Garnatxa / Garnacha / Grenache, but they can include Samsó – Cariñena / Carignan, Cabernet Sauvignon and Syrah. The land is made up of licorella soil, which is decayed slate. It seems that this sort of soil is the same one that creates the great wines of the Douro in Portugal and simply rises to the surface again all the way over here.

Priorat has a great history dating back to the early middle ages when the land was given to the Carthusian monks of the Monastery of Scala Dei. The Abbot ran the region as the feudal lord until the early nineteenth century when the locals rose up and sacked the monastery, its ruins can still be seen. The land was then nationalised and parcelled out to smallholders.

The beautiful landscape of Priorat. Photo courtesy of Oficina de Turisme del Priorat.

The wines of the area fell in to decline then until well into the twentieth century and it was not really until the 1970s when a group calling themselves the Priorat Pioneers started trying to create fine wines worthy of the local terroir. They enjoyed quick success and Priorat has gone on to be regarded as one of the great wine regions of the world. In fact so rosy has the view of Priorat become that the only problem, for most of us, is the eye watering prices that many of the wines fetch.

Normally I would say that the best way to try the wines without spending a fortune is to drink the wines of the equally tiny and very similar Montsant region which surrounds Priorat, but recently I tasted an excellent and great value Priorat itself, so I have made it my Wine of the Week.

2013 Noster Nobilis Priorat
DOQ Priorat
Catalunya, Spain

A typical blend of 65% Garnatxa, 20% Samsó and 15% Cabernet Sauvignon aged in French oak barrels for 6 months.

The colour is a deep garnet, while the nose gives off rich brambely fruit and spice. You can almost smell the heat, with richer raisin and liquorice notes. There is a wild herb note too, similar to the French garrigue.

The palate is rich, smooth and warming with wild herbs, dry peppery spices and rich red fruit, fresh, dried and cooked. there is also the distinctive local minerality that tastes like the licorella slate. This is an excellent introduction to the delights of Priorat that over performs for the price – 89/100 points

Available in the UK from Asda and Asda Wine Shop for £7.98 – it is not an own label and does not mention Asda at all.

I cannot find any US stockists, but as Wallmart own Asda that may be a good place to start. If they do not have it, they certainly have this wonderful looking book on Priorat.

Try this wine with slow roast lamb with garlic and rosemary, or even a barbecue and do not be afraid to stick it in an ice bucket on a hot day – the Spanish would.

I hope some of you try this, it is an amazing wine for the money, let me know what you think.

Wine of the Week 43 – an excitingly different Spanish style

Many drinker’s knowledge and experience of Spanish wines revolves almost entirely around Rioja, which is a great shame as there is so very much more to enjoy and experience from this wonderful country.

I love Rioja, it is a great wine region that produces many world class wines. However, Spain is brimming over with other exciting wine regions that all produce fascinating wines that are well worth drinking. What’s more many of them are made in a completely different style from Rioja and are often made from different grape varieties too.

Wine map of Spain – click for a larger view – non watermarked PDF versions are available by agreement

One region that would repay trying is Bierzo. It’s just in Castilla y León, or Old Castille, but looks and feels more Galician and Celtic than the rest of the province and indeed it was a part of Galicia until the 18th Century. It joins on to the Galician wine region of Valdeorras and has much in common with it. The geography, climate and landscape are very similar and so they use the same grape varieties, Godello for white wines and Mencía for reds. Recently I tasted a really delicious and drinkable Mencía from Bierzo and so I made it my Wine of the Week.

An ordinary night out in Bierzo with the late John Radford.

Las Médulas, a World Heritage Site in Bierzo that was once the most important gold mine in the Roman Empire.

2013 Mencía Luna Beberide
D.O. Bierzo
Bodegas Luna Beberide
Cacabelos, Léon
Castilla y León, Spain

100% Mencía and unoaked, this could not be more different from Rioja if it tried. Alejandro Luna is the owner and winemaker at this wonderful little estate. He is a local boy who travelled all over Spain learning his craft before he returned home to the far north west of Castille. Some of his vines are well over 60 years old and are grown high up – between 600 and 750 metres above sea level – on south facing slopes. This means they have good sun exposure to make them ripe, but are protected from the Atlantic rains, while the cooler air at that altitude retains the grape’s natural freshness and acidity, the conditions are so cool actually that he can also grow some Riesling and Pinot Noir. All the farming is organic with no pesticides or herbicides used. Harvesting is all done by hand and the wine is unfiltered.

Ploughing the old fashioned way at Bodegas Luna Beberide, see how high they are and how wild the landscape is. Photo courtesy of the winery.

The colour is an attractive, opaque, yet bright violet purple.
The nose gives off lovely lifted aromas of blackberry, sugar plums, cherry and violets together with a little liquorice spice and earthy minerality.
The palate is soft, round, juicy and lively with freshness balancing the rich dark fruit. Mulled wine flavours together with  Blueberry, bilberry and blackberry dominate together with cherry stones and light, supple tannins. It is light to medium bodied with lots and lots of character. A hugely enjoyable wine that should appeal to Syrah / Shiraz lovers as well as Burgundy and Beaujolais drinkers – 90/100 points.

A very food friendly wine that is perfect with pastas, pizzas and lighter meat dishes and is soft enough to drink without food too.

Available in the UK for around £10 a bottle from Devinos and Grey’s Fine Foods.
Available in the US through Grapes of Spain and these stockists here.

If you have never tried a Bierzo, or Mencía as it is grown in other regions, then this fruity and supple example might be a very good place to start. Alejandro Luna also makes more high end wines and I will tell you about some of those another day.

Wine of the Week 40 – a southern Spanish sensation

As some of you who read these pages regularly will be aware, I love Spanish wine. I think Spain is a great wine producing country that makes exciting wines in all styles. In truth I think Spain is underappreciated given the quality and value that it produces. It pains me that so many people still just think, if it’s Spanish it must be Rioja. Spain is so much more than just Rioja – great wine region though Rioja is and much as I love good Rioja wines.

I really enjoy introducing drinkers to new regions of Spain, as the wines always seem to go down well and it is always fun seeing someone taste and enjoy a wine for the first time – and often it isn’t only just a new wine, but new region and grape variety too!

Well the other day I showed a red that summed up exactly why I find Spain so exciting. It was a lovely, warming Winter wine that is so delicious to drink and such great value that I made it my Wine of the Week.

Wine map of Spain – click for a larger view – non watermarked PDF versions are available by agreement

2008 Mas Delmera Monastrell Reserva
Bodegas Mas Delmera
D.O. Jumilla
Albacete, Spain
Historically the Spanish wines that became famous were all from the north where it is cooler and the conditions less wild. In the south the weather is so hot and the land so wild and rugged that in the past it was very hard to make good wine – the exception is Sherry of course which was fortified in order to preserve it. Other wines did not have the advantage of being fortified, so did not keep as well and were generally considered to be less fine than the wines from the north, especially Rioja. I well remember tasting a Jumilla red in the early 1970s, I was very young so my palate would not have been used to red wine at all, but it was foul. Even my father poured it away, and he drinks anything!

Jumilla is a hot region of southern Spain, midway between the city of Murcia and Albacete in Castilla-La Mancha – the wine region (Denominación de Origen / D.O.) straddles the border. In the past the wines tasted dirty and stewed, because the wineries were filthy places and bacteria got into the wine. It didn’t help that in this region of Spain they used to ferment in clay tinajas – these are often erroneously called amphorae and are making something of a comeback, especially in Chile and for natural wine. In Spain these were huge jars, usually buried in the ground and they were impossible to clean properly, so the bacteria in them would have made the wine unstable. The upshot of these problems, and many others, was that by the mid 1970s Jumilla was on its knees as a wine region, with only the locals drinking the wines. Clean, bright, fresh wine was freely available in Spain, usually from Rioja and Penedès – take a bow Miguel Torres, so consumers were put of the hot, brackish, stewed and often murky wine of Jumilla. In fact such were the region’s woes that it was only created as a D.O. in 1996, once the region’s potentially bright future had been glimpsed.

And what a bright future it is. Producers have worked so hard, replacing the aged tinajas with clean stainless steel tanks and making sure the wineries are so clean you could eat your dinner off the floor. The fermentations can now take place at low temperatures, so the wines are fresher and brighter and the clean winemaking ensures they stay vibrant and fruity too. What’s more the growers have worked hard too, by finding sheltered and high, cool places to plant the vines so that the grapes do not turn to raisins in the fierce sun. By doing this they turn the heat to their advantage. The place is so arid that the vines barely grow to any height above ground, but put down very deep roots below ground. This means the vine produces a tiny crop of concentrated, flavoursome grapes, so the finished wines are rich and full-flavoured.

Monastrell vines growing in Jumilla. Photo courtesy of Bodegas Juan Gil.

Harvesting Monastrell vines in Jumilla. Photo courtesy of Bodegas Juan Gil.

For me the key Jumilla producer is Bodegas Juan Gil who makes a dazzling range of wines with bright, vibrant fruit backed up by an elegant structure that makes them a real delight – do try some of them if you get the chance, UK stockist information is here, US here, but there are other producers too, as my Wine of the Week shows. 

This wine is made by the wonderful Pamela Geddes, who is a Brit with long experience of making wine in Spain. The blend is 90% Monastrell, which the French call Mourvèdre and the Aussies call Mataro, and there is 10% Tempranillo too, which spends 3 months in oak just to firm up the wine and give it a bit more elegance.

The colour shows it age with a little garnet around the edge, but is mainly a dark, opaque ruby.
The nose betrays the heat of Jumilla, you can smell hot rocks, wild herbs and rich, ripe fruit; blackberry, blueberry, rich strawberry and some deep plum too. The palate is full-bodied and very smooth, with loads of fruit, it has some age now so it isn’t the bright fruit of youth, but the broader flavours of older wine, plums and prunes as well as blackberry. There is some earthiness and leather from the ageing too, as well as some caramel, mocha and espresso from the touch of oak. All in all a lovely crowd pleaser of a wine, smooth, full-flavoured, full-bodied and with some nice maturity on it too, grab it while you can – 87/100 points.

 Available in the UK for £10.50 a bottle from Great Western Wine.

If you have never tasted a wine from Spain’s deep south, then this is a perfect place to start. You will really enjoy them if wines from the Rhône are your thing, or if you like Malbec, or Shiraz, or just good red wines. This delicious red wine would be perfect with roast lamb, a rich casserole or even a comforting shepherd’s pie or a burger.

Rioja’s Heart of Oak

Looking south from the Sierra de Cantabria across Rioja Alavesa to the Ebro.

Rioja’s fame exceeds that of all of Spain’s other wine producing regions. Many wine drinkers, me included, love Rioja – especially the red wines, but how Rioja became the famous wine region it is and how the wines came to be made as they are is an interesting story.

Back before a handful of Bordeaux producers started carving out a new market for fine wine in the seventeenth century, most wine – including Bordeaux and Rioja – was pretty ordinary fare. Drunk mainly because it was safer than water, wine was just a part of everyday life in those parts of the world where grapes grew.

Then as now Spain was covered in vines and awash with wine. Technology and understanding had not yet touched wine, so by and large the people who tended the grapes and made the wine merely watched the process take place. Nowadays winemakers control what happens in the vineyard and winery to achieve fully ripe grapes and to make clean wines.

So, what put Rioja on the wine map? Why did the wine revolution happen so much earlier in Rioja than Spain’s other regions?

Map of Spain’s wine regions – click for a larger view. High-res non-watermarked versions of my maps are available by agreement.

Map of Rioja – click for a larger view. High-res non-watermarked versions of my maps are available by agreement.

Geography

From a location point of view Rioja has much going for it. The Sierra de Cantabria shelters it from the worst of the Atlantic rain, wind and cold – which prevent most of the rest of the Pais Vasco – or Basque lands – producing good red wines. A small part of Rioja – Rioja Alavesa – is in the Pais Vasco and it seems that Basque merchants, whose lands hugged the cold and wet Bay of Biscay, noticed that this drier area just to the south could produce the richer, stronger wines their overseas markets demanded.

In the past the big problem of course was transport, rough roads and ox carts could only transport so much and it must have been hard going to get the wine out. In those days the Spanish kept their wine in hog skins and served it from them too, so we can only guess what the wine would have tasted like after a few months – very different from even a basic wine of today.

History & a glimpse of the Future

Most of Rioja is in Spain’s smallest autonomous region, La Communidad de Rioja.

Rioja Alavesa though is in the Province of Álava in the País Vasco.

On the cusp of the 19th century, only Bordeaux specialised in making fine wines for the wealthy. Surely many Basques and Riojans must have travelled north to see what it was that Bordeaux winemakers did to their wines that created their high reputation. Manuel Quintano was a Basque from the wine town of Labastida in Rioja Alavesa where his family owned land and made wine, and he certainly went to Bordeaux. Quintano was trained for the priesthood in Bayonne and this might be where he first came into contact with good red Bordeaux wines and perhaps where he saw qualities in them that his own wines lacked? Although ordained he became more and more interested in wine and in 1785 he travelled to Bordeaux to study how wine was made there.

Labastida or Bastida in Basque.

He noted every stage of production and the differences from how wine was made back home in Rioja. Amongst much else he found out about racking and clarification, but above all it is believed he became the first Riojan to notice the effect that ageing in oak barrels could have on a wine.

It was this use of barrels that was the the most important thing Quintano learned. The oak did many things that were beneficial to the wine and these would have been especially noticeable in the days before modern vineyard and winery practices made rich, clean wines. The wood has a porous structure that allows a slight evaporation, which concentrates wine and allows in a trickle of oxygen that softens the tannin. This helps develop a more silky texture and this difference in mouth-feel between thin everyday wines and finer wines would have been much more obvious in the past when alcohol levels struggled to get above 11%.

Barrel ageing at Bodegas La Rioja Alta – photo permission Bodegas La Rioja Alta.

Of course the wood also effects the flavour of the wine, often giving vanilla, cedar, coffee, cocoa or caramel characters. All of this can often give an impression of sweetness and richness into the wine, which helps accentuate that sensation of concentration.

However the most important thing the oak did for the wine was to make it live longer. The wood contains a polyphenol – or type of tannin – called ellagitannins that helps to protect the wine from oxidation. To most wine makers in the eighteenth century, whose wines only lasted a few months and visibly deteriorated over that time, this would have seemed like finding the key to eternal life.

Quintano returned to Labastida in 1786 and set about applying what he had learned and  successfully produced wine using these techniques. In 1795 he even exported wine to Mexico and Cuba, the first barrel-aged wines to be exported from Spain and it seems they arrived in perfect condition. However, not everyone was happy with these expensive developments and complaints were made to the Council of Castile – the government – who upheld that all Rioja wine must be sold at the same price. This of course made the cost of barrels and cellar ageing prohibitive and Quintano’s experiments ground to a halt.

His achievements though were never entirely forgotten and today Quintano’s name is used for a range of wines produced by Bodegas y Viñedos Labastida. Also some of Quintano’s vineyards now form part of Bodegas Remelluri which is owned by the family of that modern revolutionary, Telmo Rodríguez.

Stagnation

So the production of everyday wines carried on interrupted from time to time by the devastating effects of The Peninsular War and the various Carlist or Civil Wars of the early nineteenth century. The local people – and pilgrims en route to Santiago – still slaked their thirst with wines stored in skins while little trickles were exported to Bordeaux and elsewhere. This trickle turned into a torrent from 1850 onwards when oidium devastated the vineyards of Bordeaux. For ease of export these wines destined for overseas were transported in barrels. The best wines would often be selected for export and so the idea of barrels being associated with quality wine became widespread in Spain.

The Rioja Revolution

Luciano de Murrieta – by kind permission Bodegas Marqués de Murrieta & Maison Marques et Domaines.

Events then came together which ensured Rioja’s future as a fine wine region and this future was all about the use of oak. War played its part too, Luciano de Murrieta – later the Marqués de Murrieta – was on the losing Carlist side in the civil war of the 1840s and went into exile in London. It was here that he apparently came to admire the fine wines of Bordeaux. On his way back from exile in 1850 Luciano spent time in Bordeaux to study winemaking and brought the modern techniques he found to Rioja where the Duque de la Victoria, the former prime minister of Spain and his boss during the wars – owned vineyards.

An early 19th century press at Faustino.

Much more hygienic evolution of the press by late 19th century – this one at CVNE can still be used.

He set about making the fermentations more efficient and hygienic and then went looking for barrels. These were in very short supply and usually the wrong size, but it seems that even using make do casks Luciano proved his point. The wines had an intensity and a fragrance the everyday wines lacked and most importantly could enjoy a long life. The experiment was a great success with exports soon going  to Cuba and Mexico. Luciano marketed his own brand from 1852 and moved to a new bodega at Ygay near Logroño in the late 1860s.

Perhaps if this revolution had been left just to Luciano de Murrieta it would have happened very slowly, but luckily at least one other pioneer had also seen the future.

The Marqués de Riscal had similarly fallen under the spell of Bordeaux wines and studied how they were made – also in 1850 as it happens – and he set out to build a state of the art winery, based on the most modern practices then used in Bordeaux. He planted Cabernet Sauvignon as well as Rioja’s own Tempranillo and even employed a winery manager from Bordeaux. It was a long project, the winery and first vintage were not complete until 1862, but the wine was an instant success and even won Gold Medals at expos in Bayonne in 1864 and Bordeaux itself in 1865.

Riscal’s wines were in great demand and were the first Riojas to be sold in bottle. To ensure that the wine in the bottle was what he had made – and that it had not been drunk and then refilled by an unscrupulous merchant – he sealed his bottles with a wire mesh. This quickly became iconic and like his techniques became imitated by other Rioja producers.

It helped that the railway arrived in Rioja in 1864 and linked it to Bilbao and Madrid as well as the French frontier and so Bordeaux. Finally Rioja could export its wines more easily and efficiently.

So, by the 1860s because of a series of disasters, accidents, wars and study by inquisitive people Rioja had ceased to be a backwater for wine. Instead it had become a region producing wines, made by the most modern techniques, that were worthy of mounting a challenge to Bordeaux itself.

Barrel shaving at Bodegas La Rioja Alta. Most Bodegas have their own coopers. Photo by permission Bodegas La Rioja Alta.

So, Rioja was born and strangely enough oak, rather than grapes, was the dominating characteristic. What’s more French oak was expensive and rather bizarrely it seems that it was more normal even for the French to use Russian oak in the days before the Russian Revolution in 1917. So instead Riojans looked to the recently independent Spanish colonies in the Americas as their source of oak. These countries were their natural trading partners and a large market for their wines. The oak was plentiful, cheap and gave even more flavour than European wood – in fact it gave that rich sweet vanilla character, that has been the hallmark of Rioja ever since.

Evolution

Spanish drinkers as well as foreigners quickly came to love this rich and clear flavour that set Rioja wines apart from the other wines of Europe. Ageing in American oak had many benefits that made the wines very attractive to Spanish drinkers who had never before been able to enjoy high quality wines from their own country. The rich oaky vanilla flavour became a fundamental part of the wine style, as did the silky texture and smooth tannins. This came from the long oak ageing which also ensured, together with careful racking, that the wines had little or no sediment in the bottle, something the Spanish consumer favours to this day.

So popular did the style become with the Spanish – and even now Rioja is more widely available in Spain than wine from any other region – that for well over 100 years only about 20% or so of production was exported. Rioja was the quintessential Spanish wine and this resulted in other regions copying Rioja’s techniques, style, even labelling and wire bottle seals.

Growers and Bodegas

One unexpected result of Rioja’s oak ageing techniques was the virtual demise of estate wine. Historically growers had made their own wine, albeit in a rudimentary way, and sold that to their neighbours or merchants to blend with other wines. The new methods and the cost of the equipment put modern winemaking beyond their reach so most of these farmers focussed on growing grapes which they sold to the bodegas who could afford the oak barrels and the new equipment. Even now estate bottled Rioja is relatively unusual with bodegas traditionally buying much of their fruit from a spread of growers.

It seems to me that in those low tech times this separation of skills could actually have been beneficial to quality. Nowadays we assume that estate wines are better, almost by definition, but this separation allowed the farmers to concentrate on growing better fruit while the winemakers could put their energies into turning them into good wine. It wasn’t universal by any means, but separating growing and wine making certainly became the norm and Rioja’s fame and reputation as a quality wine region stems from this moment.

Viña Pomal from Bodegas Bilbainas is still a strong brand.

CVNE is another long lived Rioja brand, this menu card is from 1901.

This also allowed for the creation of some really strong and long lasting wine brands which might not have happened if every grower had been marketing their own wines – after all France which had a more grower centric and fragmented wine industry has been hampered in its fight back against the new world by a real lack of strong wine brands.

Continued French Involvement

Rioja had certainly advanced by the late 1800s, but was not yet entirely sure of itself. True the wines had a market in Spain and some quality Rioja was exported in bottle, but it is highly unlikely that Rioja would have developed as far and as fast as it did without further French influence.

Just as Rioja was getting started, Bordeaux was in deep trouble. Oidium and Phylloxera took a heavy toll on France’s vineyards from the 1850s to the the 1890s and so Bordeaux struggled to produce enough wine. Even when they had solved the Phylloxera problem by grafting their grapes onto American rootstocks there was a long, wine-less wait for the new vines to mature. Luckily Rioja had wine to spare, the quality was good, it had been made using modern French techniques and so perfectly suited the wine starved French market.

Indeed to a large degree the style of Rioja that we know today was a French invention. The long barrel ageing was a deliberate attempt to make the Rioja destined for the French market to taste more like Bordeaux did at the time. So successful was it that the techniques quickly became used for the entire production, not just the wines that were reservé for the French market.

Ageing

It is tempting to assume that Rioja as we know it emerged into the world fully formed in the mid 1860s. Certainly Riscal and Murrieta were quickly followed by a wave of other bodegas that are still with us today – these include López de Heredia, CVNE, Muga, Bilbaínas and many other famous names.

However, although the basics of the techniques – or recipe – had become established, the fine details took some decades to develop. The consumer was given wines that had already been aged and so were ready to drink and had little or no sediment. The vessel the wine was aged in gave a rich, sweet vanilla character that enhanced the wine’s natural fruitiness – this is an important consideration as in the days before modern technology and cold fermentation it was much more difficult to make fresh, fruity wine. So strange as it may seem, unoaked Rioja – now officially categorised as Joven – is an entirely modern development and has only been around for the last 40 years or so once winemaking made it possible. For nigh on 100 years, Rioja relied on oak to round out the wines and give them a richness they otherwise lacked.

Rioja barrel ageing at CVNE.

Rioja ageing in bottle at CVNE.

The process of ageing the wines was called raising or criar – it is the same word for children and plants – and so the oak aged wines themselves came to be called Crianzas. As well as being the collective word for any oak aged Rioja, Crianza is also the official  classification term for those Riojas aged in wood for the shortest time.

Between the 1860s and 1960s all red Rioja was barrel aged and ageing was the most important consideration. So much so that until well into the 1960s many Riojas – and other Spanish wines – were labelled with no mention of vintage. Instead the vital piece of information on the label was how long it had been aged for and so they were labelled as 3er Año – meaning it was bottled in the third year after harvest. More expensive wines were labelled as 5˚ Año, meaning it was bottled in the fifth year after harvest. This tradition clung on into the 1980s for bottles in Spain anyway and I remember being very confused by it during my early days in wine.

The terms Reserva and Gran Reserva are so strongly associated with Rioja that it might surprise some to learn that they did not exist before the very late nineteenth century. Apparently the expression stems from French wine companies reserving certain barrels of Rioja that they would ship home to beef up their own wines. It was not until the 1920s that Reserva and Gran Reserva started appearing on labels.

Denomination de Origen & Classification 

Throughout history decrees had been issued regulating where Rioja wines could be made and as we saw during Manuel Quintano’s time, rulings had been made about how it could be made. It was not until the 1920s, with phylloxera beaten and a ready market for their quality wines, that serious attempts were made to legally define Rioja.

Rioja was created as Spain’s first Denomination de Origen in 1925, but no real control was  in evidence until 1953 when the Consejo Regulador drew up the regulations for Rioja wine. This controlled yields and permitted grape varieties, it banned chaptilisation and stipulated minimum alcohol levels, but above all it codified the ageing and oaking regime for Rioja wines – the current regulations are:

Crianza: Wines which are at least in their third year, having spent a minimum of one year in casks and a few months in the bottle. For white wines, the minimum cask ageing period is 6 months.

Reserva: Selected wines of the best vintages with an excellent potential that have been aged for a minimum of 3 years, with at least one year in casks. For white wines, the minimum ageing period is 2 years, with at least 6 months in casks.

Gran Reserva: Selected wines from exceptional vintages which have spent at least 2 years in oak casks and 3 years in the bottle. For white wines, the minimum ageing period is 4 years, with at least one year in casks.

Oak Types

As you can see the rules require aged Rioja wines to be aged in oak barrels, or casks  – chips and staves are not permitted – and these must be of the Bordeaux type that contain 225 litres. There are no restrictions as to the type of oak, but American oak has always been the most widely used.

Although we overwhelmingly associate Rioja with American oak, some producers champion French oak and its use is increasing. Some use just French, but I have noticed a trend for Riojas to be aged mainly in American oak with a small amount of French, typically 15% or 20%. Normally the wine would be aged and then blended, but to avoid this Bodegas Beronia for instance use barrels which have staves of both American and French oak.

French oak is split, not sawn and so the grain and pores never open as they do with sawn American oak. In addition the kiln drying of American oak concentrates their lactones, which accentuates those creamy vanilla notes. The result is that French oak gives a more restrained and subtle character of spice and cedar. Using a combination of the two can often make the wine seem tighter, firmer and, some might say, more elegant than using  American oak on its own.

Of course many bodegas are experimenting with other oaks and using them too. Hungarian, Slavonian and Russian oaks can all be found in Rioja today. Stylistically they lean in a similar direction to French oak but give less spice character.

The Present and the Future

In my view there can be no doubt that oak has been good for Rioja. Most Riojan winemakers seem to think that American oak has been good for Rioja too. It certainly seems to me that without the clear identity that American oak brings, the easily definable and tasty vanilla character, then Rioja would not have enjoyed the success that it has.

The use of oak, especially American oak, made the wines seem richer and more full-bodied than they actually were in the 19th and 20th centuries. People liked the aromas,  flavours and silky, smooth texture and found it easy to define what it was they liked in these wines. The style is approachable and so it is no accident that Rioja is often one of the first red wine styles that drinkers enjoy.

Old vines in Rioja Alavesa.

Vinos de Autor

Of course if oak can be seen as generally good for the region, it is also true that some producers feel a little constrained, albeit benignly, by the Reserva and Gran Reserva classification system. They want some of their wines to be an expression of the vineyard and the winemaking without reference to such a classification, one practical reason is that if a bodega produces a top wine as a Gran Reserva in one vintage and as a Reserva or even a Crianza the next, then some consumers might well imagine the wine to be inferior – which is not necessarily the case. The classification is about ageing and not quality. That is why increasingly many bodega’s top wines are now defined as Vino de Autor or signature wine and marketed without reference to the Reserva / Gran Reserva classification. CVNE’s Real de Asúa and Pagos de Viña Real are both examples of this, as are Roda’s Cirsion, Beronia’s III a.c, Contino’s Viña del Olivo and Muga’s Torre Muga amongst many others.

The buildings at CVNE date from 1879.

Progress

Concrete fermentation tanks, modern and hygienic in the 19th century.

Nothing ever stands still and it is instructive that as grape growing and winemaking has become more technically advanced and accomplished then Rioja has branched out. As soon as cold fermentation made attractive, fruity and unoaked jovens possible, they made them. These can be enjoyable wines and offer great value for money, but they lack that classic oaky Rioja character and it is hard to envisage anyone ever producing a truly fine and complex unoaked Rioja.

The Future

The modern fermentation tanks at Viña Real.

All the producers I spoke too agreed that oak has helped to define their wines and to give Rioja a clear identity. Some saw the future as having increasing use of European oaks to produce more restrained wines, while most were of the opinion that American oak would continue to dominate Rioja – albeit with French and other oaks used as seasoning.

The dramatic barrel room at Viña Real.

No one seemed in any doubt though that the future of fine Rioja wine will be glorious and is as closely linked to oak as its past.