First published in Costa News SL, December 2010

NEW YEAR RESOLUTIONS

YES, IT’S THAT TIME AGAIN!

Granted, there are more important things about which to make some enduring(?) resolutions than wine matters, e.g. recycling; using less power; making choices that don’t endanger any more precious species. But, in fact my wine resolutions this year reflect most of the above anyway.

My first New Year Resolution, though perhaps not the most important, is to continue to advise wine departments in supermarkets (these are the worst offenders) and the occasional wine shop which forgets its duty to the consumer, to make sure that they keep their wines in the best conditions and, sin of sins, to stop selling wines that are clearly too old! I’ll do the same in restaurants too.

My voice in the wilderness might help our cause but, the combined voices of readers in a united, voluble front will surely cause wine retailers to re-think their buying and selling policies. Order fewer wines each time then you won’t be stuck with bottles that are too old at the end of the year – it’s really quite simple.

I’m certain that as I write this there will be retailers ordering, receiving and selling-on rosados vintage 2009, for example, which by the time you are reading this will already be past their best! Nobody wins – the bodega that makes the wine, the distributor, the retail outlet (including restaurants) and ultimately the consumer, are all losers!

I’m also going to buy more wines closed with corks than with synthetic and screw-top stoppers. Yes, I am aware that with cork the percentage of ‘corked’ wines will at best remain constant and may well increase, until the scientists finally solve the problem, that is. However, for me the cost of the impact of all these synthetic closures on the environment far outweighs the disappointment of opening a damp-cardboard-smelling wine!

And linked to the above – on those occasions when I do buy (or, more likely, receive through the post, lucky guy that I am) bottles that have synthetic closures, I’m going to make sure that they are deposited in the correct re-cycling bins. I don’t want our children to wake up one morning to view billions of brightly coloured plastic ‘corks’ floating on the Mediterranean alongside shoals of dead fish, whilst the bottom of the ocean is littered with metal bottle tops and land-fill sites are producing toxic gasses and polluting the soil. Cork is natural, let’s stick with it!

Whilst I’m on an environmentally and socially aware trip there’s another related resolution I’d like to put forward – one which we can all follow, for our mutual benefit. I’m sure that, built-in to more and more bodegas’ development plans there is a financial incentive for them as well, but I’m equally sure (mostly!) that these plans are also born of a genuine concern for our earth and our social responsibilities.

I’m referring to the increasing numbers of bodegas which are now changing their methods to help protect what we have. Many bodegas (and wineries world-wide) are signing-up to sustainable farming principles lessening the damaging impact of their industry and gradually ensuring that future generations will continue to reap the benefits of the Earth’s soil.

Natural fertilisers are preferred to man-made chemicals (it’s obvious to me!); natural pest control methods are clearly better than chemical sprays; oak casks, so crucial to top-class winemaking, are being made from oak that is part of re-planting schemes – fell a tree, plant two or more in it’s place.

It goes further than this too – wineries are seeking to reduce their CO2 emissions and thus reduce the wine industry’s carbon footprint. The saving that Codorniu is making with their new bottle, for example, is staggering – more on this in ‘Cork Talk’ soon!

I’m going to support those bodegas that are making such efforts.

Happy New Year!

FIRST PUBLISHED IN COSTA NEWS GROUP NOV.2010

LA VINOTECA’S BACK-TO-FRONT TASTING

LEAVES THE BEST TO THE LAST!

Most wine books and experts agree that wine tasting should be in the order of white to red and dry to sweet. The first wine tasted at La Vinoteca, Calpe recently was Bodegas Sierra Cantabria Crianza 2006, their most economically priced red wine, followed by three further red wines, two of them weighty fellows, but ending with their Organza 2008 white wine. Unusual!

The crianza was 98% Tempranillo with a tiny amount of Graciano blended in too. I found the wine only palatable at first, largely due to it being a little too chilled – a comment my fellow tasters also made. However as the wine both breathed and warmed there was a slight coconut aroma, coming from the French oak barrels, in which, along with American oak barrels too, it had aged for 14 months.

Sierra Cantabria Cuvee 2005, 22€, is made from vines of more than 30 years old which have been treated in an organic way in as much as no artificial fertilizers have been used in the vineyard. It was bottled without filtration and with only gravity to clarify the wine.

It has a darker, more intense colour than the crianza, and is just showing some faint browning at the edges, indicating that it is ageing in bottle. On the nose there are earthy, undergrowth notes underpinning the dark fruit quality.

Colección Privada 2007 retails at 40€. The vines for this wine are over 50 years of age, that’s old in La Rioja where vines are often grubbed up at 40! Harvesting was strictly by hand ensuring good quality bunches which were then subjected to the selection table test where any damaged or below par grapes were discarded. It enjoyed 18 months in oak, followed by further time in bottle in the cellars.

This wine has the tannin and structure to age and indeed it will be better with more time under its belt, but for me it needed greater fruit content for it to age for much more than 5 -7 years. There are notes of herbs a touch of coffee and some spice as well as some floral perfume, but not a lot of fruit on the nose. A mineral, slatey element complemented the wine which will be super with food.

El Puntido 2006 is five Euros more expensive. Opaque and very dark coloured this is a big wine made from old vines whose grapes have been examined on two sorting tables. It’s had 16months in French oak from which coffee tones mix with excellent dark and juicy blueberry and blackberry fruits. It was my favourite of the evening with a long finish helping to justify its price-tag and a wine to grace any dining table.

So to the final wine, a Rioja white! This wine has been both fermented and aged in oak. The medium-high toasted French oak adds significantly, but not unfavourably, to the overall taste. When in barrel the wine was stirred with its lees twice a week adding a creaminess to the final taste. A pleasing fresh acidity cleaned the palate after the onslaught of the big reds.

However freshening up the palate is not the aim of fine white wine and I’m afraid that in my opinion the reason why the white wine was enjoyed at the end of the tasting rather than at the beginning has more to do with the fact it was the best in terms of readiness to drink than it being the best order to serve it.

FIRST PUBLISHED IN VINOS DE ESPAÑA OCTOBER 2010

THE CALM BEFORE THE STORM!

BODEGAS CASTAÑO, DO YECLA,

PREPARES FOR THE 2010 HARVEST

As Head Winemaker Mariano and the equally indispensable Minister Without Portfolio, Carmen, drove me to one of Bodegas Castaño’s vineyards, there was a contagious and yet intangible air of excitement, tinged with a touch of anxiety. There is a chain of events that eventually leads to grape collection, and precisely when that occurs is on Mariano’s say-so alone.

The responsibility sits comfortably on his broad shoulders, however. This internationally respected oenologist is at the top of his profession, having worked for decades in the family owned, and indeed familial, bodega.

Fran, the bodega’s Head Agricultural Engineer and first link in the chain, had informed Mariano that in his opinion the vines of certain vineyards were reaching maturity. With grapes now in glorious dark purple colour the mother plant turns its attention to changing their acidity into sugar, a procedure achieved through the good offices of its leaves.

It was time for Mariano to make regular, twice daily visits to determine exactly when the itinerant pickers should descend on the vines and get to work on the grapes that have been so lovingly husbanded throughout the growing season. Vinos De España was invited along to learn how such important decisions are made, as well as observe the pre-harvest preparations back at base.

Mariano relies on two aspects: the visual and the technical. The magnificently tailored vines looked in pristine condition as we made our way down one aisle and up another in the baking sunshine. Mariano moved stealthily, predator-like, from vine to vine firstly looking at the perfectly formed bunches of Cabernet Sauvignon and then plucking an occasional grape.

Those bunches whose stems were approaching a brown colour leading to the first berry were inspected closely. A grape here and another there would be taken. If there was any flesh left where grape left stem, the time was not quite right. Further evidence was gleaned by taste and mouth-feel – Mariano tasted and felt the texture of the skins in his mouth. The flesh was sweet, but sweet enough? And the skins, too dense means – delay a little longer.

Then, a further consideration. The seeds were inspected. Green pips indicate ‘not yet’, browning seeds suggest ‘nearly’. Then, by way of further confirmation, for the first time, Mariano turned to technology producing his trusty refractometer. This instrument measures the amount of sugar contained in the juice of the grapes (a delightful pale pink demonstrating how quickly maceration affects colour). The juice was attained simply by squeezing the grapes into a pleasingly low-tech plastic bag! Although he would ratify his findings in the laboratory later, his verdict was ‘not today’ for this parcela!

In fact Bodegas Castaño’s harvest had started, in part, already. The Chardonnay used in their 50/50 blend with Macabeo had been harvested a few days before our visit and was fermenting by then. Also the black grapes used for their limited production, fruit-driven Carbonic Maceration red wine were being unloaded onto the selection table as we spoke. Furthermore the white wine grapes from their experimental vineyard were also undergoing fermentation, samples of which we tasted later.

Back at the bodega, the grape reception area was bright and exemplary in its cleanliness – a byword, once ignored in Spanish winemaking, but now a major focus since the era of the flying winemaker and the influence of the new generation of winemakers such as Mariano. Outside it was still and quiet, all was calm. Inside, it was a different story – a precursor mini-storm was in progress.

The workers were in the last throws of the ultimate cleaning. This feverish activity misses no corner of the bodega. No pipe, no stainless steel fermentation vessel, no grape press, no selection table, no gently moving conveyor belt, no tool, nothing.

To make medal-winning wines of the quality of Bodegas Castaño (whose exports amount to some 95% of the total production and whose points totals in the various guides, including Parker and La Guía De Oro, are invariably in the high 80’s and 90’s) no bucket shall be left unturned, every area and piece of equipment shall be cleaned, disinfected and sterilised!

We next went to the huge stainless steel fermentation tanks where half of this year’s Chardonnay was already fermenting. Mariano drew off three glasses of cloudy, fermenting juice adorned with what looked like the head (froth) on a glass of beer! The aroma was stunning – paraguaya, that lovely peach-like fruit from South America. The flavour, sensational – sweet and frivolously full of tropical fruit, with a small amount of alcohol (5%) at that moment and of course a touch of effervescence.

We next looked at the oak barrels, reposing in controlled chilled conditions, which contained the other 50% of the Chardonnay. This barrel fermentation adds different taste nuances and a certain creaminess to the finished wine. Here the taste was different, drier with an as yet faint oak influence, a more grown-up taste.

Before a splendid lunch we tasted fermenting samples of mostly white wines made from grapes grown in Bodegas Castaño’s experimental vineyards but including early harvested Pinot Noir whose sombrero (‘hat’ of skins that have naturally floated to the surface) we had seen in the tank.

It was clear that all was in hand, spotlessly clean, ready and waiting for the frenetic activity to come – the storm that is the harvest!

It is my sincere hope that, by writing the above title on the eve of the 2010 Vendimia, I am not precipitating the arrival of La Gota Fría, or indeed any other harvest-damaging storm. I’m not tempting providence!

FIRST PUBLISHED IN COSTA NEWS GROUP OCTOBER 2010

CHAMPAGNE ‘GREEN’ WITH ENVY OVER CAVA’S ‘CLEAN’ BUBBLES?

It’s Halloween as I write and through the office window I can see a light drizzle gently falling from all-enveloping, overcast, grey clouds bringing the land at least some succour after such a long, dry summer and autumn. This year I have no fears for my friends and colleagues at the sharp end of the Spanish wine trade who, weather-wise, have enjoyed one of the best years on record. (More soon on the 2010 Vintage!).

However I have sympathy for some of those engaged in the noble art of Champagne crafting over the Pyrenean border following some worrying news, which broke in June but simmers still. And this is far more serious than the simple vagaries of the weather!

Over 50% of a year’s production of cava and sparkling wine is sold during the Christmas period here in Spain. It is the drink of celebration and largely at an affordable price. So at the start of November the fizz makers’ commercial departments are already in full swing making sure that supplies are arriving at distributors’ warehouses. Back at base more pallets are forming an orderly queue anticipating escalating sales indicating, at least for a short period, a country-wide rejection of La Crisis!

This year there may be an even bigger demand, this time coming from consumers who normally buy their Champagne from growers near the town of Soulaines in the Aube area France. The CIVC, Champagne’s member supported representative body, has recently lost an appeal against the continuation of Nuclear waste being dumped in the area.

The court’s decision gives the green light to ANDRA, France’s national atomic agency to continue disposing of nuclear contaminated gas and liquid, but will it therefore mean a green glow in Champagne made in the area?

ANDRA is certain it won’t. Whilst it admits that there is ‘a tiny’ amount of nuclear pollution in the water table beneath the area, it insists that the levels are far below the recommended maximum. Furthermore it declares that as the water table in fact flows to the north-west and the hallowed vineyards are to the south there cannot therefore be any contamination of the precious vines, and ultimately of course the Champagne in your glass.

Greenpeace, whilst it admits that there is as yet no evidence of contamination, also states that nuclear pollution has been released into the atmosphere and into the water underground for ten years. They go on to quote the problems at La Hague, near Cherbourg, another nuclear waste facility, where, after having reached its capacity for nuclear waste storage, it was closed but still registers radioactivity readings over seven times the ‘acceptable’ level.

The plant at Soulaines has a maximum capacity in excess of that of La Hague and has already suffered, an apparently harmless, crack in its walls! Greenpeace says, “We are sounding the alarm for future dangers.” But are they also sounding the alarm not only for local producers but also for lovers of Champagne?

There is precedent. France’s Coteaux de Tricastin has recently won the right to change its name (to Grignan-Les Adhemar) in an attempt to halt a dramatic slide in sales seen as resulting from it being associated with an ‘accident-prone’ nuclear site at Tricastin! One such accident was a Uranium leak in 2008 and although subsequent tests revealed no vineyard contamination, consumers voted with their shopping trolleys!

There are no such worries for two wine producers who operate, coincidentally, only a few kilometres apart form each other in the Jalon area. Armando, co-owner with his sister, of Bodegas Parcent; and Peter and Helen Arnold of Bodegas Garroferal in Murla are both just about to introduce their first ever sparkling wine. (They cannot be called Cava as neither bodega is in the officially demarcated cava producing area and in fact each fizz will use an unauthorised grape variety, but the method is the same).

I feel rather privileged to be amongst the first to taste both these brand new sparklers very soon! Readers in the area will also be able to do the same with Bodegas Parcent’s as I’ll be co-hosting a bodega tour and tasting with Armando where his new ‘vino espumoso’ will be launched!

PS A super weekend of wholly different wine tastings will take place on: Friday 26^th November at Restaurante Asador Salamandra, Moraira, with Classical music from Dolce Divas later!; Saturday 27^th at Javea Port’s Café D’Art, with an Art Exhibition too!; and Monday 29^th November, Bodegas Parcent, Parcent for a tour and tasting! Further details and reservations (essential) – please call 629 388 159.