Tag Archives: Spain

I have just returned from Alimentaria, Barcelona's wine and food fair. Although this is only about as big as the London wine fair, ie a quarter of the size of Vinitaly, it is focused solely on Spain, naturally, and therefore there are a considerable amount of wines to sift through. Normally I avoid fairs like the plague as I prefer to find my quarry in the field, not in the zoo, so to speak, but this was an exception and I needed to find inexpensive house wines and see some of our producers, the backdrop of Barcelona and the fact a few friends were there too, made for a convincing argument to attend.

Day one was spent not at this fair, but at Vini Vinoteca, a tasting of the top wine producers in Spain, well, some of them anyway. This is organised by an on trade company and is based in the centre of town. The place is incredibly busy so tasting anything is a bit if a nightmare. However with a few tips from our friends at Dominio do Bibei, I managed to select the producers worth looking at. Highlights were Erasmus Priorat, Pardas from Penedes, an agency that I hope to ship and Domaine Lupier in Navarra who make the best Garnachas I have tasted in a long time. Others of note, but who are with UK importers already were Emilio Rojo, Rafael Palacios Jimenez Landi and Pingus. Incidentally the new Bibei wines are stellar, 2010 Lapola having a touch of Albariño in it now which has really lifted the fruit. These guys will be at the Real Wine Fair.

So, on to the main event in a massive fiera centre south of the city. I spent an hour or so getting my bearings and working out a plan of attack. You can never expect to taste everything and it is better to focus in on specific targets. Mine were:

• House wines to hit a £7 price point
• Juicy reds and vibrant whites for sub £10
• Great estates from eclectic regions

I avoided Rioja, Ribera del Duero and Cava, as well as the big commercial stands, so this removed 35% of the fair in one swipe. My first targets were Jumilla and Jecar, both south east of Madrid, but with altitude. I struck gold after about 3 hours, with two fabulous reds and a pair of house wines that hit the spot perfectly, and one is organic to boot. Great packaging and a really lovely philosophy. I also tasted some horrendous extracted wines that are already in the UK and frankly shouldn't be. So Xenysel will be joining us soon, as will Bodegas Ego, with one of the weirdest labels I have ever seen (and that is saying something!)

I also met a friend who makes wines at Evohe in Aragona. We would take the Marzuala Garnacha Blanca and maybe the Garnacha too, and the pricing would be comfortably under £10 for us. They are great wines and very good value, and capture the mood of new wave Spain perfectly. These will be in the shops by May.

Next up, Ribeira de Jucar east of Madrid. I tasted some lovely wines here and again cracking value. I need to delve a bit deeper as the wine maker of the wine I really enjoyed was not at the stand but Casa Gauda make pretty juicy wines and well packaged too. The prices have yet to be revealed but they are sure to be good value.

Then on to Terra de Leon and a wonderful estate producing Prieto Picudo, a variety with rich luscious fruit but fresh acidity and strong tannins. Pardevalles makes a great introductory wines from this variety as well as a more serious wine that we would sell for around £12. As well as this they have 4 ha of Albarin, a variety that bears no relation to Albarino, and that only has 30 ha in the world. It is fresh, vital and luscious on the finish, a really great wine that sits in the Loire/alto adige school of freshness. I am keen to work with these guys and the wines will be with us in May.

Castell d’Encus have produced an Albarino for us that we could sell for £14.95. It is sensational and we have up to 2500 bottles. Raul (Bobet) has designed a new label for us and it is great that we have the world exclusivity for this wine. It was great to see his stand was constantly busy and there was a real buzz about his wines and Encus. We have an icon here to be sure!

I also tasted some lovely Galician wines, mostly Monterrei, Valdeorras and Ribeira. I found a beautiful Monterrei from Vina Arxentia, fresh and herbal with real zip, and a fine price too, circa £12. As well as this I need to track down Crego e Monsguillo who apparently make fabulous wines. I also tasted lots of Godello and I must say it’s not my favourite variety, a bit sloppy and ill defined in the main, but the wines from Coroa were excellent so I need to find out more about this lot, they will probably be super expensive but I will go and see them in June!

Mas Bertran Cava is amazing. They have produced a new label for Balma which is very cool and can be seen on the website. I also tasted a producer called Rudeles from Ribera del Duero (I know, this one slipped in somehow), based near Dominio do Atuata in the eastern end of the region. They are good wines, but I am less convinced that the market for these wines is really all it needs to be to justify shipping them. More research then...

Onwards and to Ribeira Sacra to taste around and about. No worries, we have the best producer here, but I was impressed by Algueira who make slightly more chunky wines. This is such a beautiful area and I dare say that the potential for making very fine wines will soon be realised by more and more producers. Even Dirk Nieportt has started making wines out here!

Navarra. Oh dear. I am afraid I blanked here nothing of any interest to speak of, and he region was very badly represented. This is normally rich hunting ground but...

A quick diversion with the ‘Chicos del Terruar’ a group of producers who are all cool and funky and make terroir focussed wines. Interesting wines but all in the premium range and I wonder if this sort of esoteric style has the legs to really gain traction in the UK market. I am keen on one or two of the wines, including a Priorat made by Laurent Combier from Crozes Hermitage.

I tasted a good many other wines and spent time checking out the competition too. It is incredibly tiring, three days being too long and after a while you feel you have kissed enough frogs. Spanish wine is definitely on the up, sort for where Italy was about 20 years ago, and you feel it still has a long way to go which is very exciting. I tasted too many traditional wines that still have to be made for the home markets and South America, and these wines really stick out. Cheap wine is easy to find, but mostly it is turgid and undrinkable, so it was gratifying to kind something we can work with as a house wine proposition.

I would say that wine fairs, are not for me, they are too noisy and blurred, even if this was a lot of fun. I tasted a huge range of wines, but I have to say that I would rather have been tasting them in the vineyard with only the producer and the wine to listen too!

We have been importing wines from Castell d’Encus since spring 2010 and we love them because they are delicious and refreshingly different. Earlier this year, Ben and I had the opportunity to visit Castell d’Encus for the first time and we both left with the impression that there is a lot more to come from this fascinating new project in Costers del Segre. Despite the winery’s recent creation, it has already received glowing reviews from Jancis Robinson and Spain’s Guia Peñin 2011, plus the Castell d’Encus “Thalarn” 2008 was named “best new discovery” in last year’s New Wave Spain awards competition. As we drove away from the winery that day it was clear to us that we had to share with the world what Raul is doing in this amazing, and isolated, part of the world.

DO Costers del Segre is scattered around the city of Lleida in NE Catalonia and is composed of a number of subzones. Castel d’Encus is situated in Pallars Jussà, the most northerly subzone located in the foothills of the Pyrenees and it is a beautiful, remote and wild area not far south of Andorra.  Raul Bobet was first drawn to the area while working for Torres as Technical Director during a search for cool climate vineyards that could offer a buffer against a warming climate in the future. It was on one of these forays he came across Castell d’Encus and this extraordinarily bold, pioneering vineyard and winery project was set in motion.

Our group, drawn from all corners of the UK, boarded an Easyjet flight from Gatwick to Barcelona in the morning, some of the party bravely (strangely?!) sampling the Easyjet selection of vinous offerings. Warm. This was followed by a three hour drive to our destination at the winery, which is up vertiginous road on the side of a mountain 850m above sea level. On arrival, we were welcomed by Raul, stretched our legs and took in the stunning panorama below us, across the valley below to the town of Tremp and hills beyond, which were bathed in the late afternoon sun. Firstly, we had a quick tour of the recently built winery. It is a well designed and thought out, functional space with custom made touches and its simplicity, yet attention to detail, reflects the winemaking ethos. In many new wineries this would be the main attraction, however the site of Castell d’Encus has a rich history and was occupied by Hospitalier monks for several centuries.

As well as the remnants of old buildings that they lived in and a chapel, which has now been renovated, Raul discovered old fermentation vats of various sizes dating back to the XIIth century that the monks had carved into the bedrock. The monks left the site in the 1700’s and the gravity fed cisterns had gradually filled with debris and been buried during the intervening years. A number of these have now been reinstated and Raul and his team have used them on an experimental basis for making the red wines. The discovery of these ancient vats was serendipitous and not part of the original winemaking plan and there is enough capacity to ferment the majority of the estate red wines within them in future to help create something special and unique.

It had already been a long day for the group so we retired to Hotel Bertran, in the nearby town of Salàs de Pallars. Raul joined us later and we had a delicious meal of traditional Catalan cuisine accompanied by the current bottlings of the Castell d’Encus wines, Ekam 2010, Taleia 2009, Quest 2008 and a limited edition single varietal Cabernet Franc. This was preparation for the following day, when we were scheduled to visit the vineyards and taste the wines in their various stages of development in barrel and tank in order to gain an insight into why these wines offer such a different taste profile from how it is commonly assumed Spanish wine should taste.

We were in the vineyard early the following morning. The Pinot Noir and Riesling vineyards are located right at the top of the mountain, above the winery at an altitude of 1000m. The vines at Encus are more closely planted than the norm in Spain and Raul explained the rigorous approach to canopy management to ensure that the vines remained balanced despite their youth. Being so high, up to 1000 m, it is a marginal environment for growing vines. The positive side of this is that the resultant wines possess clear varietal and terroir expression, however the downside was amply demonstrated as Raul described how hail had laid waste to the previous two vintages. In addition to the hail, 2010 was also a particularly difficult and cool year, which was exacerbated as much of the foliage was stripped from the vines by the hail. 2011 has benefitted from an early start and at the time of our visit pre-veraison was looking very promising. We are all hoping that the rest of the season is hail free and the team at Castell d’Encus are finally rewarded for all their hard work with a bountiful harvest.

We moved down to the barrel cellar to taste the wines in tank and barrel. The Acusp Pinot Noir was being assembled for bottling so we had a preview of it, a wine of lovely finesse, though sadly none will be available for export this year. Starting on the barrels we tasted some fabulous Syrah, made in an elegant, expressive N Rhone style, with vibrant violet and pepper notes. This was followed by Cabernet Sauvignon and Franc and we were all intriguing to see the difference in style between the batch fermented in stainless steel and the batch fermented in rock. The wine from the rock fermenters exhibits a rounder structure and greater depth of flavour, without the herbal streak evident in the tank fermented wines. Before lunch there was also time to try some of Raul’s experiments with Sauvignon and Albarino, while he explained his plans to add Malvasia and Garrut, a native Catalan red grape.

Castell d’Encus has already produced some great wines, but it is exciting to see that it is still very much a work in progress. Raul likened winemaking to cooking, though he only has one chance per year to make a dish. He is determined to create something great and unique with his remaining harvests. He has chosen a challenging location to make his vision reality, however the obvious risks potentially bring great rewards. This visit was a tantalising glimpse of what is only the beginning of this inspiring venture and we all thank Raul for giving his time and sharing his knowledge so freely.

For more information visit the Castell d'Encus web site www.encus.org and if you happen to speak Spanish and social media is your thing (and we hope it is as we love it too!) then do follow Castell d'Encus on Twitter.

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Wine of the Week,  18.06.11: Leirana Albarino Joven 2009 @ £17.95

Rodi Mendez produces a tiny amount of wine in his house above the Galician resort of Sanxenxo in the sub region of Rias BAixas known as Salnes. Rodi, strangely has made his name producing some extraordinary red wines from local varieties (also available at Caviste and recently reviewed in the Guardian), but his Albarino’s are spectacular and we are totally in love with them!

Our wine of the week is the Albarino Joven (he makes a Barrica, single cru and a one using a process involving skin maceration for 6 months!) which has a pure, fresh peach and tropical nose and delicious fruit and acidity on the palate. This is wine that is far greater than the sum of its parts and set to become an icon of the region.