Tasting the Camino

Another week, another tasting!  This one focussed on one of the most unusual and interesting themes I have encountered in the many years I have been attending tastings: the Camino de Santiago de Compostela.  The Camino is the network of ancient pilgrims’ routes to the shrine of Saint James in Compostela in North West Spain.  The tasting, ably hosted by Raz from Corks of Cotham, featured some of the wines that present day pilgrims, who number more than 200,000 a year, might find along their way.

Over the centuries, many pilgrims will have travelled through France, crossed the Pyrenees and found themselves in the Basque region of Spain and that’s where our tasting began.  Gaintza’s Txakolina (£19 – all wines mentioned are available from Corks) is a dry, delicate, saline white and, as Raz suggested, one of the few wines that pairs well with olives.  Our ‘journey’ continued away from the coast into the Rioja region where we tasted Inedito Turrax (£22), a rich, full-flavoured white made from 2 rare native grape varieties, and Marques de Zearra (£16), a proper traditional oaky red which had benefitted from 18 months in American barriques and clearly will still be drinking well several years from now.

Moving closer to our destination – Compostela is in Galicia – we tasted another white, the deliciously floral Noelia Albariño (£22), one of my favourite wines of the night – a view not shared by our table-mates! – and a pair of very different reds. 

The first, Peixe da Estrada (£23) was my joint winner of the evening; fresh and quite light-bodied with lovely red fruits and herbs while the other, Mauricio Lorca’s Viña Peon (£20) was more extracted with intense smoky dark fruits, a style reflecting, perhaps, the Malbecs familiar to the Argentinian winemaker.  This was another wine that split opinions among those present at the tasting.  The wine world would be a worse place if we all liked the same!

An altogether fascinating and most enjoyable tasting – and all without leaving our seats in Bristol!

An Obscure DO

Have you ever noticed the words ‘Denominació d’Origen’ or the letters ‘DO’ on the label of a Spanish wine?  It’s the Spanish equivalent of the French ‘Appellation Contrôlée’.  There are around 70 DOs ranging from the well-known – Rioja, Cava and Jerez (Sherry) are all DOs – to the unheard of: for example, I don’t remember ever seeing DO Ribera del Júcar on a label, but it exists – a small area about halfway between Madrid and Valencia for those who are interested! 

Not quite as obscure, but still rare, is DO Empordà, a tiny area split into 2 parts close to the Mediterranean coast and as near to the border with France as it’s possible to get without actually leaving Spain.  The area is best known as the birthplace and home of Salvador Dalí, but it has an ideal climate for grape growing with mild winters and hot summers, aided by the strong, northerly Tramontana wind which regularly blows through the vineyards and keeps frost and vine diseases away.  Being off the ‘wine radar’ of most customers has meant that a high proportion of the region’s vineyards have kept their old vines which, although they tend to produce smaller yields of grapes, the resulting wines are often more intense and focussed.  This was certainly true of Perelada’s Només Garnatxa Blanca (DBM Wines, £14.99) made from grapes harvested entirely from 50- to 60-year-old vines.

Garnatxa Blanca, better known as Grenache Blanc, is the less-planted white cousin of Grenache Noir.  Both Grenaches are grown widely across southern France (particularly in the Rhône Valley) and in Spain, most often being part of a blend, but in Només, Blanca proves its quality as a solo performer.  A full-flavoured dry white – herby (dill, fennel and tarragon) – rather than overly fruity but (and here’s where the old vine character kicks in) quite rich and mouth-filling and a perfect accompaniment to chunky fish or chicken dishes.

You might not see wines from DO Empordà in the shops here very frequently but, based on this robust, flavoursome white, they are well worth looking out for.

A Shy and Reticent Wine?

The English are often described as ‘reserved’ people: shy, reticent, not very forthcoming.  But the word ‘reserve’ can have other meanings: I can reserve a table at a restaurant or set a reserve – a minimum sale price – at an auction, for example. But what does it mean to wine lovers?

Look along the shelves of your local supermarket or wine merchant and you’ll notice that Reserve (or a local variant such as Reserva or Riserva) is one of the words most commonly found on the labels.  So, does it mean that the wine is shy, reticent and not very forthcoming?  Unfortunately not!  But, what it does mean (if anything) varies a lot, depending on where the wine comes from.

Things are clearest in Spain.  There, Reserva denotes a red wine that has been aged for at least 3 years before being released for sale, at least one year of which must have been in oak barrels.  For whites and rosés, the figure is 2 years (6 months in barrel).  The requirements for Gran Reservas are longer: for reds, 5 years (2 in oak barrel), for whites and rosés, 4 years (6 months in barrel).

Across the border in Portugal, the rules for their Reserva are much less specific, simply requiring the wine to be from a ‘good’ vintage (how do you define that?) with an alcohol level at least ½% above the regional minimum (which varies from place to place).

Italy’s equivalent is Riserva.

This also varies from place to place – as do most things in Italy; it, too, denotes a certain minimum ageing, usually at least a year, although, for Barolo, it is as long as 5 years!  Often, higher alcoholic strength and other requirements are also included in the local rules.

And that’s as far as the regulated use of these terms goes.  Anywhere else and the word has no official meaning.  It might be used to suggest that the wine is of a higher quality, as in the French ‘Réserve du Patron’ or terms like Estate Reserve or Reserve Selection, or has seen some oak ageing, but, outside Spain, Portugal and Italy, none of this is guaranteed.

To my mind, we ought to reserve (sorry!) the use of the word to those places where it does have a legal meaning, but I’m not going to make a fuss about it because I’m English and too reserved!