So pale it could almost be a rosado, this is a refined, ethereal Garnacha from vines planted on granite soils at 500 metres. Fermented with stems for texture and perfume, it’s a subtle, layered, haunting red from young winemakers Aitor Paul and David Villamiel, with aromas of ginger, Turkish Delight and forest floor, graceful, caressing tannins and a savoury finish of wild strawberry and clove.
Country: Spain
Where Next For Appellations?
by Andy Neather
Massive hailstones ravaged Chablis last year and fires consumed thousands of hectares in Galicia last month: climate change is accelerating. Grape-growing conditions in classic regions simply aren’t the same as...
The Rewards of Patience
by Tim Atkin
If anything teaches you patience, humility and a degree of circumspection, it’s making wine. However much of a hurry you may be in, a vineyard takes three years to produce...
Spain’s Wine Revolution
by Andy Neather
Marta Labanda led me up the steep, black slopes of Barranca del Obispo. Here in Lanzarote, growers cultivate vines in hollows dug out of the granular black volcanic ash. It’s...
2021 Piedra Fluida Los Frontones, Islas Canarias Tenerife
( £32, 13%, Wood Winters )Piedra Fluida is the (pet) project of former dog food magnate Felix Becker, who has made it his priority to save venerable vineyards from abandonment. This delicious Listán Blanco comes from the 80-year-old parcel in Granadilla de Abona that is the highest in Europe at 1,680 metres. It partners aromas of iodine, oyster shell and dried herbs with a palate of lemon, wet stones and subtle nutmeg spice and a taut, chiselled, mouth-watering finish.
Seeing Differently
by Margaret Rand
How, today, can a wine surprise us? And does that element of surprise come by accident, while both we and the wine are, as it were, looking elsewhere, or can...
The Dilution of Terroir
by Guy Woodward
First up, a trigger warning… I’m approaching this article from the premise that terroir exists. It’s a position to which I would hope most readers of this site would subscribe....
Aiming High
by Tim Atkin
Where are the highest vineyards in Europe. Switzerland? The Alto Adige perhaps? Both have sites that are vertiginous when you compare them to most of the continent’s classic wine regions....
2021 Ca' Leando L'Arenal Monastrell, Valencia
( £18.50, 14%, Noel Young Wines )I tasted this wine as part of a six-pack that my friend Noel Young offered to customers who wanted to support the winemakers of Valencia after the terrible floods last year. And I loved it.  It comes from a small 2.6-hectare vineyard called Lloma Rasa, which benefits from being at 550 metres. Made entirely  with Monastrell, the best local red grape, it has hints of clove and tobacco leaf from partial whole bunch fermentation,  flavours of wild thyme, fennel and rosemary, savoury tannins and a core of plum, strawberry and redcurrant fruit. Quintessentially Mediterranean.
A Different Path
by Margaret Rand
Did any grower ever say, ‘I’m looking for a really cold, wet site – Yorkshire, maybe, or Derbyshire – so I can plant Ortega and Huxelrebe and Rondo’? Equally, how...
Let Me Count The Ways
by Harry Eyres
Once, many moons ago, I was in a bar in Sanlúcar de Barrameda with my friends Tim and RocÃo Holt. Possibly I had imbibed one too many copitas of Manzanilla,...
2021 Manda Huevos Carramainas, Calatayud
( £15, 13.2%, The Wine Society )Norrel Robertson MW, known as the Escocés Volante (Flying Scotsman), is making some of the most distinctive wines in northern Spain right now. Manda Huevos – Spanish slang for “no way!” – is a remarkable, barrel-fermented cuvée of Macabeo and 5% Garnacha Blanca from an 85-year-old vineyard at 850 metres in Calatayud. Creamy, spicy and stylishly wooded, it has notes of beeswax and citrus zest, stony intensity and a hint of vanilla spice.