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Recently Tasted Spanish Wines - February 2015
And More Notes from October 2014 Visit to Spain
John Gilman, View From The Cellar
(John Gilman accompanied me to visit all these suppliers, including all my producers in Galicia, in October 2014. He paid for his own airfare, hotels and his share of the rental car, gas and meals to which we were not invited by producers.)
View From The Cellar Publisher-Writer John Gilman, Eugenio Merino from Bodegas Hermanos Merino with his Viña Catajarros Rosado, and Gerry Dawes, President of The Spanish Artisan Wine & Spirits Group, Corcos del Valle (Valladolid), October 3, 2014. Photo by Gerry Dawes©2015 / gerrydawes@aol.com / Facebook / Twitter / YouTube / Pinterest. Canon G15 / Canon f/1.8 – f/2.8 5X 24-140mm IS USM.
As readers will recall, I spent nearly half the month of October of 2014 in Spain and wrote extensively about my visit to some of the very top producers in the magical region of Galicia back in Issue 53. However, my fortnight in Spain was not exclusively spent in this breathtakingly beautiful northwestern corner of the country, as I managed to stop in at a handful of bodegas in several other regions over the course of my visit to the Iberian peninsula, but have not yet had the opportunity to write up the notes from these other visits. Several of the bodegas that I visited outside of Galicia were also very classically, old school producers, of which there sadly are such a small percentage of the overall number of wine producers in this beautiful country, as the modern wine bug has bitten this country as hard as any in the last twenty years and there are an awful lot of wines produced these days that are wildly popular within Spain and which I find absolutely undrinkable.
Happily, for the most part, my Spanish sojourn managed to steer clear of virtually all of these, which is not that easy to do when one is dining in Madrid these days, and as I had a very good tour guide in Gerry Dawes, whose passion for old school Spanish wines probably burns even brighter than my own (though perhaps not so diplomatically), so there were very few visitations by the over-oaked and high alcohol school of modern Spanish wines during our trip.
Gerry Dawes, Jorge Carnero of Viña Cazoga and John Gilman of View From The Cellar at Cazoga. John is holding a bottle of the stellar 1996 Viña Cazoga Joven Mencía, which had not only withstood 18 years in tank and bottle without oak, it had grown into a gorgeous wine that may be the greatest Ribeira Sacra wine I have ever tasted. Photo courtesy of Gerry Dawes.
While the two primary purposes of my October trip were to spend an extended period of time in Galicia, which I think is quickly becoming one of Spain’s very top regions and surpassing several far more famous D.O.s in wine quality, as well as visit Cuné and Contino and complete the necessary research for the historical feature on those two great Rioja estates, I did have time for several more days of tasting across the Iberian peninsula during the trip. This article primarily covers those other visits from October, with the exception of the great morning spent in Ribera del Duero with Goyo Garcia, whose utterly brilliant wines merit an estate feature on their own and which will appear in an upcoming issue of the newsletter. Suffice to say that Señor Garcia is currently making the very finest wines in all of the Ribera del Duero D.O. and it is simply a waste of time to be drinking anything else from this region- including the most famous names- if one has access to the wines of Goyo Garcia.
I have fleshed out this article with recent tasting notes on several various Spanish wines that I have sampled here in New York between November and February, as I returned to the states with a powerful thirst for more old school Spanish wines and sought out samples wherever I could find them over the course of the subsequent months. Not that I am opposed philosophically to more modern styles of Spanish wines, if they can be done well, and a few of these types of wines are also featured in the notes that follow in this article. The problem, at least to my palate, is that the vast, vast majority of the modern Spanish wines that I taste these days are really poorly balanced wines, with alcohol that is excessive for positive evolution in the bottle, and often the high octane is coupled with heavy-handed new oak treatments as well, and the combination of the two is usually highly detrimental over the long haul for the wine in question. I am well aware that this modern style of wine is far, far more popular in Spain itself than the more old school and elegant wines that I gravitate towards, and producers here for the most part are dependent on the domestic market for most of their sales, so it makes financial
sense to craft wines from overripe grapes and lots of new oak, for that is what their clients primarily want these days.
To my mind, while it is understandable that the market and their attendant taste makers dictate the style to a large extent in many bodegas across Spain these days, I find the situation a bit sad and emblematic of the greater malaise that affects businesses ingeneral in the twenty-first century. There was a time when the landscape of commerce was sprinkled with innovators and visionaries who truly believed in their business models and sought to educate clients and expand their horizons, rather than simply following the herd so as to book a few orders as the parade rolled through town. In the world of wine, some regions have a stronger foundation of tradition to withstand the fickle fate of fashion, whereas in others, it is all too easy to join one’s neighbors and simply make the same formulaic modern wines.
Happily, there remains a small percentage of wineries in Spain that are out of step with the modern trends in the world of wine, and I was very lucky to have the opportunity to visit several of these during my October trip. As many of these bodegas are starting to gain a reputation in their own country, finally, for the excellent quality of their wines, it seems pretty clear that an undercurrent of classicism in the world of Spanish wines is starting to stir and we may well be in an age where the cornerstone is being laid for a Spanish renaissance of more classically styled wines that will rise up and challenge the modern school in the decades to come.
Given the gorgeously diverse and impressive range of terroir to be found throughout Spain, there will always be hope for the wines of this country, if the heavy hand of vinous modernism can be rolled back a bit in the coming years. One of the overriding issues of concern in the world of (p. 122) Spanish wine in most regions is how widespread irrigation can be better utilized to return wine styles to their traditions, as irrigation has made it possible to grow enormous crops in some of the semi-arid regions where wine production is entrenched, and these huge crop loads almost demand a modern style of winemaking to cover up the inherent defects of too many grapes on too many hectares of vineyard land. The overly abundant yields simply eradicate expressions of terroir in wines, and this is an issue that will need to be confronted bravely for many of the decidedly second division modernists to start making wines that are truly worthy of connoisseurs’ attention. Slick public relations, high profile consulting oenologists, attentive brand building and illicit generosity to market makers may be able to push the cases out the door of the bodega for a while, but in the long run, the vitality of a winery’s business has to be founded on the true quality of the wines which they produce.
The following article is broken up into two sections, with the first dealing with my October visits to various wineries outside of Galicia, which I have not yet had the opportunity to write about. The second section covers recently tasted samples of Spanish wines tasted here in New York since my return from my autumn trip to the country, and these notes have been organized by region, starting in the northwest and working across the peninsula in an easterly fashion. Within each regional grouping, I have listed white wines first, followed by red wines, with the same categories of wines posted in alphabetical order by winery name. My notes on recently tasted Cava appear in the article on Champagne and Sparkling Wines, rather than here. I should mention that there was no attempt to organize samples from specific regions of Spain when I began contacting importers (or they reached out for me), as I was in the mood to taste anything of quality from Spain, and if an importer asked if I wanted to taste any of their producers from Galicia, I of course responded in the affirmative, even after just having written fifty pages on this beautiful region!
I should note that one of the great unexpected pleasures of my October trip was to be introduced to yet another absolutely classic producer in Rioja, Bodegas Lecea, whose wines I had never even heard of before and which I found to be absolutely stellar. The family winery of Bodegas Lecea is currently owned and run by Luis Alberto Lecea and now ably assisted by his son, Jorge. Luis Alberto is interesting in that he is the very first head of the Rioja D.O. to actually be a vigneron and farmer, as all of the previous heads have been négociants or representatives from one of the very largest producers. His wines are utterly classic and a great new addition to the international Rioja scene, as they have just begun to be imported into the US. For importers in other markets, I strongly urge you to pay a visit to Bodegas Lecea pronto, as these are great wines that have been virtually unknown outside of the region.
Bierzo Estates Visited
Though Bierzo lies just outside of the borders of Galicia, in the neighboring province of Castilla y León, in spirit and wine style, it really should be considered part of Galicia. The two most important grapes in Bierzo are Mencía for red wines and Godello for white wines, and with plenty of high altitude vineyards planted on a mix of clay, stone and slate soils, this region, on the eastern borders of Ribeira Sacra and Valdeorras should probably be included in Galicia if the provinces of Spain could be re-written along wine-producing lines. However, the climate here does tend to be a touch more “continental” than a bit further west in Galicia, with warmer days in the summer and less rainfall, so that the resulting wines can be a bit more concentrated in style than the slightly more filigreed examples across the border in Galicia proper. Many of (p123) the top vineyards in Bierzo are up in the foothills of this mountainous country, scattered amongst the timbered ridges, where the evening temperatures plunge sufficiently in summer to keep the resulting wines fresh and focused. This is a ruggedly rural wine-producing region, but with excellent terroirs and lots of old vines and the potential to produce some of Spain’s most interesting wines.
Gonzalo Madai of Hermanos Madai, Gerry Dawes and Gregory Pérez of Bodegas Mengoba, where Madai leases space and hires Pérez as their enologist, at Bodegas Mengoba in Cacabelos (León), Bierzo. Photo courtesy of Gerry Dawes.
Madai, Bodegas Hermanos Amigo, Gonzalo & Daniel Amigo (Cacaebelos)
Grégory Pérez is one of the top consulting winemakers in Bierzo, and in addition to making his own wines at Bodegas Mengoba, he is the man behind the wines at several other top estates in Bierzo (including Hermanos Amigo’s Madai) with Godello his particular specialty for his client wineries. Señor Pérez was not born and raised in Bierzo however, as his home payee is actually Bordeaux, and he graduated from the University of Bordeaux in 2001 with his degree in oenology. One of his classmates at the university was Eduardo Garcia, one of the sons of Mariano Garcia (formerly cellar master at Vega Sicilia and now the producer of Mauro and Aalto in Ribera del Duero), and after a couple of internships at well-known châteaux in Bordeaux, Grégory accepted a job in Bierzo at a winery where Mariano Garcia was consulting at the time.
His first few years in Bierzo were spent producing oaky, high octane Ribera del Duero copies in Bierzo, out of Mencía primarily, but he eventually began to dislike those oaky and heady wines and began to yearn for a more classic expression of Bierzo’s terroir. In 2007 he purchased five hectares of high altitude vineyard land and founded Bodegas Mengoba to pursue his vision of Bierzo wines, unadulterated with heavy doses of new wood. The vineyards that he purchased included plenty of old vines, with the vine range these days running anywhere from thirty years up to eighty years of age, with most of the vines pruned goblet style and scattered in small parcels amongst the wild, mountainous countryside of Bierzo.
A few years later, he started a second line of wines, called “Brezo” and made from purchased grapes in the region. In the last couple of years, Señor Pérez has moved away a bit from using older barrels and stainless steel tanks, having purchased some large oak foudres for the raising of several of his cuvées, with a few of these holding two thousand liters and now being designated for his Mengoba Blanco bottling. There are some five thousand liter foudres as well, which are being used for the elevage of a few of the reds wines here. The wines are across the board excellent, with plenty of soil character, outstanding focus and balance and seemingly, plenty of capacity for aging in the bottle. Grégory Pérez is clearly one of the budding superstars in the Bierzo region and it is pretty easy to be persuaded that there are a lot more interesting projects going on in his cellars than in ninety percent of the cellars these days in his native Bordeaux.
(Note from Gerry Dawes: Grégory Pérez leases winery space and conducts the enology for Hermanos Amigo’s Madai wines.)
2013 Madai Origen Godello – Hermanos Amigo
The 2013 Madai Origen Godello offers up a lovely nose of peach, fresh almond, white soils, a touch of beeswax and a nice touch of spring flowers in the upper register. (p124)
On the palate the wine is medium-full, focused and shows excellent mid-palate depth, with fine focus and grip, sound acids and blossoming complexity on the long finish. Classy juice. 2015-2020. 90.
Old vines Godello in the family vineyards of Hermanos Madai, near Cacabelos, Bierzo. Photo by Gerry Dawes©2014 / gerrydawes@aol.com / Facebook / Twitter / YouTube / Pinterest. Canon EOS 7D / Canon 24 105mm f/4L IS USM (38.4-168mm equivalent).
2011 Madai “Godello Sobre Lias” Blanco – Hermanos Amigo
The 2011 Madai “Sobre Lias” is comprised of one hundred percent Godello and was raised entirely a one year-old demi-muid. The bouquet offers up a very pretty blend that recalls white Hermitage a bit in its blend of pear, beeswax, chalky stones, dried flowers and a discreet vanillin oak. On the palate the wine is deep, full-bodied and complex, with broad shoulders, good bounce and fine length and grip on the still quite youthful finish. This is good juice, but the extended period on its lees may have sacrificed a bit of precision in exchange for more stuffing. However, the wine is still on the young side and it may more fully snap into better focus with a bit more bottle age. If so, my score will seem unduly conservative. 2016-2020+. 89+.
2013 Madai Origen Mencía Tinto – Hermanos Amigo
The 2013 Madai Tinto is made up of a blend of ninety percent Mencía and ten percent Alicante Bouschet. The wine is quite lovely, wafting from the glass in a blend of cassis, woodsmoke, espresso, slate and again, that lovely topnote of leafiness from the Alicante that I simply adore in wines with this varietal in the blend. On the palate the wine is pure, full-bodied and nascently complex, with a fine core, excellent focus and balance and a long, moderately tannic finish. The acids are a bit lower in the 2013 Madai bottling, (p126) but this seems likely to just make the wine accessible a bit sooner in its development. Good juice. 2016-2025+. 90.
2010 Madai “Mencías Sobre Lias” Tinto – Hermanos Amigo
The 2010 Madai “Mencías Sobre Lias” Tinto is a dynamite bottle of wine that truly shows the potential inherent in these old vines scattered around the foothills of Bierzo. This cuvée was raised entirely in “one wine” barrels and came in at fourteen percent octane, but is absolutely cool and precise in the mouth. The pure and blossoming bouquet jumps from the glass in a blaze of cassis, dark chocolate, incipient notes of venison, espresso, slate, a touch of vanillin oak and a lovely topnote of smokiness. On the palate the wine is deep, full-bodied and nascently complex, with a fine core of fruit, excellent balance and focus, ripe, suave tannins and a very long, poised and palate-staining finish. This is really a high class bottle in the making, but I would still keep it tucked away in the cellar for at least another five years and really let it blossom completely. 2020-2040+. 93.
Bodegas Adriá (Villafranca del Bierzo)
Bodegas Adriá is located in the small town of Villafranca del Bierzo, which is the first sign of civilization after one descends out of the mountains between Galicia and Bierzo. The estate specializes in inexpensive wines that offer good quality and value for their price points, and until quite recently, Grégory Pérez was the consultant here. The winery was founded all the way back in 1940 by Señor Francisco Pérez Adriá, and the estate continues to be run to this dayby his family. The Adriá family owns twenty-five hectares of Godello vines and has long term contracts with local growers around Villafranca del Bierzo for an equal amount of Mencía vines, as well as a small amount of Tempranillo. These are vineyards up in the hills above Villafranca, with no irrigation and good stony soils that are a mix of clay and fractured slate. The winery bottles wines under two labels, Viña Barroca and Vega Montán. They seem to offer good depth (p 127) and stuffing, in a slightly rustic pattern. . .
2013 Viña Barroca Tinto - Bodegas Adriá
The 2013 Viña Barroca Tinto from Bodegas Adriá is comprised of a blend of ninety percent Mencía and ten percent Tempranillo, with the wine raised entirely in stainless steel tanks. It really is quite pretty, as it wafts from the glass in a blend of dark berries, espresso, a bit of bonfire, a nice base of soil tones and a smoky topnote. On the palate the wine is deep, full-bodied and a bit rustic in structure, with a good core, moderate tannins and a long, fairly complex finish.This is a good, solid “country wine” that may gain a bit more polish with bottle age, but delivers plenty of depth and Mencía character for a low price. 2015-2020. 87+.
Viña Barroca Bierzo Mencía 2009 (far right) from Bodegas Adrià (Vilafranca del Bierzo, Léon) which also makes Vega Montán. Photo by Gerry Dawes.
Rueda Estate Visited
Rueda is Verdejo country and one of Spain’s most interesting and ageworthy white wine grapes reaches its apogee in this lovely region.
Bodegas José Pariente
José Pariente was a grape-grower in Rueda in the 1960s and he began to produce a bit of Verdejo for himself, his family and his friends during this decade, convinced that the grapes that he was growing were of top quality and capable of producing outstanding wines. However, he never realized his dream to create a commercial winery prior to his passing away in 1997, but his daughter, Victoria Pariente, was able to found the family winery in his memory in 1998 and over the brief history of this bodegas, the wines have become reference point examples of Verdejo.
Today, Victoria Pariente is joined in the running of the estate by her daughter, Martina Prieto Pariente and her son, Ignacio Preito and the two generations work side by side crafting some of the most distinctive wines to be found in the D.O. The winery today offers up five different cuvées: a regular bottling of Verdejo raised in stainless steel tanks, a Sauvignon Blanc also raised in stainless, a Verdejo “Cuvée Especial” whose elevage is done in concrete eggs, a barrel-raised Verdejo “Fermentado en Barrica” and a rare, Rueda dessert wine based on Sauvignon Blanc, called Apasionado de José Pariente”.
The family was the very first to plant Sauvignon Blanc vines in Rueda, back in 1984, and the family used the grapes from their oldest Sauvignon Blanc vines to make this late-harvest bottling. In addition to the five commercially available wines produced here, the Pariente family is also experimenting with a solera of Verdejo that is developing into a Sherry-styled wine and which has been going since the 2008 vintage. Across the board, the quality of wines here is absolutely exceptional and these must represent some of the finest white wines values to be found anywhere in Spain today.
View From The Cellar Publisher John Gilman with Martina Prieto Pariente at Bodegas José Pariente in La Seca, Rueda. Photo by Gerry Dawes©2015 / gerrydawes@aol.com / Facebook / Twitter / YouTube / Pinterest. Canon G15 / Canon f/1.8 – f/2.8 5X 24-140mm IS USM.
2013 Verdejo - Bodegas José Pariente
The 2013 Verdejo from Bodegas José Pariente is an excellent bottle, jumping from the glass in a vibrant aromatic mélange of lime, pear, green olive, wild fennel and a nice touch of other exotic botanicals in the upper register. On the palate the wine is pure, fullish and zesty, with a beautiful signature of salty soil tones, excellent focus and grip, lovely complexity and a long, vibrant and classy finish. Really an excellent bottle of Verdejo and a great value. 2015-2020. 90.
2013 Sauvignon Blanc - Bodegas José Pariente
Sauvignon Blanc has been part of the vineyard patrimony in Rueda now for thirty years
and the grape variety has taken beautifully to the stony terroir of the region. The 2013 example from Bodegas José Pariente is a first class example of this lovely varietal, delivering a classic bouquet of gooseberry, fresh-cut grass, a lovely base of soil tones, pink grapefruit and a gently smoky topnote. On the palate the wine is deep, full-bodied, crisp and impressively complex, with a fine core, bright acids and excellent focus on the long and beautifully balanced finish. High class juice. 2015-2020. 91+. (p129)
2012 Verdejo “Cuvée Especial”- Bodegas José Pariente
The 2010 vintage was the first of Cuvée Especial produced by the estate, after four years of experiments working with Verdejo under several different aging protocols to finally arrive at the cellar methodologies now used for this lovely cuvée. Today, the wine is aged for eleven months on its fine lees, entirely in concrete eggs, with a bit of lees stirring in the early days of its elevage. The 2012 is a touch riper than the 2013 regular bottling of Verdejo (13.5 percent versus thirteen), but the wine is impeccably balanced and cool in the mouth. The stunning nose soars from the glass in a blaze of pear, green olive, gentle leesy tones, dried flowers, a great signature of salty soil, wild fennel and a smoky topnote. On the palate the wine is deep, full-bodied and absolutely rock solid at the core, with a youthfully snappy structure, outstanding focus and gripand stunning length on the pure and complex finish. This is reference point Verdejo that should age beautifully! 2015-2030+. 94.
2012 Verdejo “Fermentado en Barrica” - Bodegas José Pariente
The barrel-fermented and aged cuvée of Verdejo from Bodegas José Pariente is alsooutstanding. The wine is aged for six months in barrel, of which one-third are new casks, prior to assembly in tank and bottling. The 2013 is outstanding, offering up a deep, complex and gently oaky bouquet of pear, wild fennel, a lovely base of soil, green olives, vanillin oak and just a touch of upper register smokiness. On the palate the wine is deep, full-bodied and beautifully (p130) balanced, with a fine core, bright acids and excellent length and grip on the focused and complex finish. The oak here is done very discreetly and this too is exemplary Verdejo. 2015-2025+. 94.
2013 Apasionado de José Pariente - Bodegas José Pariente (500 ml.)
The 2013 Apasionado de José Pariente is a lovely example of late harvest Sauvignon Blanc. Botrytis is not a possibility in the dry region of Rueda, so the grapes here are left out on the vine to ripen as much as the autumn will allow, and then fermented at cool temperatures to maintain the aromatic purity of the wine. The 2013 Apasionado de José Pariente carries eighty grams per liter of residual sugar and offers up a very pretty bouquet of gooseberry, currant leaf, tangerine, a lovely base of soil and gentle grassiness in the upper register. On the palate the wine is deep, full-bodied and impressively light on its feet, with fine focus, length and grip, great acids and a fairly modest impression of sweetness on the palate for its percentage of residual sugar. This is a lovely wine. 2015-2025. 92.
Verdejo “Barrica Solera” - Bodegas José Pariente
This wine is an experiment that is basically being made for family consumption and events at the winery, but Martina Prieto Pariente was kind enough to allow us to taste the wine. I would assume that this one hundred percent Verdejo wine is still very early on in this its evolution and that the plan is to allow this solera to go on for decades and decades, eventually producing a very distinctive, oxidative wine that will be used for special events at the bodegas.
The wine is really very lovely already, offering up aromatic notes of lemon peel, a salty base of soil, nutty overtones and Verdejo’s telltale smokiness. On the palate the wine is full-bodied, complex and already quite Sherry-like in profile, with lovely focus, length and grip. Fun stuff. 2015-2065+? 89.
Cigales Estate Visited
To my palate, some of Spain’s most interesting dry Rosados hail from Cigales, with the stony soils here perfectly suited to producing deep and classy rosés from grapes such as Tempranillo and Garnacha. There are some good, solid, everyday reds also produced in Cigales, but I have a soft spot in my heart for the Rosados from this rugged countryside.
Bodegas Hermanos Merino
Bodegas Hermanos Merino is run by the Merino brothers, Eugenio and Alberto. The estate owns fifteen hectares of vines in the stony soils of Cigales, with eighty percent of the vineyards planted to Tempranillo, ten percent to Verdejo and five percent each to Garnacha and Alvillo. The Merinos focus almost exclusively on Rosado sold under their Viña Catajarros label, for which the region of Cigales is rightly famous. The Merino brothers only produce a small amount of red wine here to augment their production of great Rosado.
Eugenio Merino of Hermanos Merino, producers of Catajarros Rosado, Cigales, Castilla y León, Spain, with one of his magnificently tended Tempranillo vines (note the stony floor of the vineyard). Photo by Gerry Dawes©2014 / gerrydawes@aol.com / Facebook / Twitter / Pinterest. Canon 5D Mark III / Canon 24-105mm f/4L IS USM.
They have lots of old vines here, goblet-trained and sticking up out of the Chateauneuf-du- Pape-like stony soils like wizened old hands. Twenty percent of their vines are over fifty years of age and they have more than a thousand plants in excess of one hundred years old! Their Rosado is fermented in stainless steel at cool temperatures and bottled the following May after the harvest, with ten percent of the blend made up of the white grapes of Verdejo and Alvillo. It is a darker-colored Rosado and ages very well indeed, as Eugenio Merino was happy to show us when we stopped by on a sunny October morning during my trip to Spain.
While I am a fan of Spanish Rosado when it is first released, I like it even better with a bit of bottle age, as like so many other traditionally-styled wines on the Iberian peninsula, good Rosado from Cigales is clearly capable of gaining in complexity with some bottle age. (p. 131)
2013 Rosado “Viña Catajarros”- Bodegas Hermanos Merino
The 2013 Rosado “Viña Catajarros” from the Merino brothers is a lovely bottle in the making, but probably still a tad on the young side and will offer up even better drinking come springtime. The bouquet wafts from the glass in a youthful blend of cranberries, pomegranate, lovely spice tones and a fine base of salty soil nuances. On the palate the wine is full-bodied, crisp and nicely balanced, with a good core, fine focus and a nice touch of spices meats adding complexity on the long finish. Good juice. 2015-2019. <span lang="ES" style='font-family: "TimesNewRoman\,Bold"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-ansi-lang