Where Spanish wine might go (Jancis)
Re: Fino with deserts?
Ver mensaje de Iñaki BlascoOf course fino should not be on a desert menu. I politely pointed this out to our waiter, but this restaurant had such a superior attitude about everything that I am sure they assumed I had no idea what I was talking about.
LOL... you are right... It’s not true.
Ver mensaje de WaltZalenskiYou can find fino/manzanilla in almost every bar (for not to say in every bar) in south Spain, I mean Andalucia.
I’m in Madrid and it’s quite odd to find bars where fino or manzanilla are offered... And, ehem... the storage condition... we should open a new thread just about this issue... :-/
From my point of view, in Spain, at this very moment, the wines like fino/manzanilla/sherry/oloroso/palo cortado... and so on... are just like Cinderella :((((
Cheers,
Jose
Some discussion...
Ver mensaje de WaltZalenskiWalt, everything can be a bit controversial in we have enough time to think about it :-) Let’s see some comments from Jancis:
";we expect most red wines to be fruity and clean-smelling. Fruit has started to replace oak as the dominant flavour of Spanish wine, thank goodness.";
Well, not so easy. New french oak has started to replace American old oak as the dominant flavour of new modern Spanish wines I could say... As always, the difficult point is to get balance between good fruit and oak. I can’t see that it’s getting more balance now than ten years ago regarding this question. Two much overripen fruit and two much new oak flavors in the new Spanish wines I drink...
";Then we come on to Garnacha. Again, it has been my impression that Spanish winemakers are not desperately enthusiastic about this vine variety, seeing it as essentially rather rustic and many rungs down the ladder of status than, say, the aristocratic Tempranillo. Yet, like Monastrell, it enjoys a much higher reputation outside Spain and I firmly believe that, in the right vineyards, Garnacha is an under-used resource in Spain.";
Garnacha, like Bobal (which Jancis fails to mention in spite of the interesting new Utiel-Requena wines with this grape) is a difficult grape to grow, specially if you work with productive clones and young vines. For this reason it doesn’t enjoy a good reputation among growers. But it’s true that wines from indigenous grape varieties can be much more interesting for wine aficionados around the world. But first we must try to avoid that growers replace these grape varieties with new international vine varieties and this is not so easy.
Re: Some discussion...
Ver mensaje de Juan Such";we expect most red wines to be fruity and clean-smelling. Fruit has started to replace oak as the dominant flavour of Spanish wine, thank goodness.";
I assumed Jancis was referring to more than 10 years ago - back to the ’70s when, over the course of the decade, Spanish wine imports to England increased by a factor of 10. Much of this wine was from Rioja made of the ";old"; style but of very cheap quality - almost all vanilla (oak) with a small bit of watery strawberry fruit. I just read two articles by a British writer from the 1980s about this. He remarked that even the introduction of the basic Marques de Cáceres crianza to the market in the late 1970s represented a huge increase in quality.
I do not disagee with you that modern use of overly cured French oak to give a powerful punch to wine which also has strong fruit can also be an abuse of oak. On the other hand, in some cases I think we have to see how this style evolves. If it is a case of strong oak an strong fruit battling for dominance in a young wine, there is at least the possibility of balance with more age, which was not the case with cheap bulk Rioja. My recent tasting note regarding the 1999 Palomero is perhaps a good example.
Re: Some discussion...
Ver mensaje de WaltZalenskiIt’s true that in the last 30 years there has been a lot of ’industrial’ low quality Rioja wine. Good fruit and care in all the stages of production has always distinguished good wineries from the bad ones. What is clear is that nowadays a lot of people (and wine critics) ask for wines with more color, good French oak and strong fruit and Rioja wineries are adapting to this market. Only time will show how this wines evolve and integrate (or disintegrate ;-) in bottle.