Old Vines
Old Vines
Ver mensaje de WaltZalenskiAlejandro Fernandez, the famous winemaker of Pesquera, was in Washington DC for a couple of days last week. At a most enjoyable dinner at Taberna del Alabardero, he interrupted the wine tasting festivities periodically to provide welcomed commentary about his wines and other related matters. He made one particulary interesting comment about the current state of Spanish wine: he believed that all the recent focus on very old vines is nothing more than marketing propaganda designed to create a false, or at least meaningless, sense of rarity in order to increase prices. He said that old vine fruit was no prediction of a wine’s quality, which of course seems accurate. I believe from his remarks that he also meant more than this: that a single skilled winemaker can make a wine of equal quality using reasonably mature vines (e.g. 20 years old) as he can from ancient pre-phylloxera vines.
It is true that talk of very old vines increasingly is part of the marketing efforts of many Spanish wines, and I assume that the view that this meaningless propoganda might be viewed as somewhat controversial here. Any reactions?
Re: Old Vines
Ver mensaje de WaltZalenskiWell I partially agree. No doubt that there is an important part of marketing in the revalorisation of wines coming from old vines. I also think that you can produce magnificent wines from 20 year old vines (and younger….) but the risk with the renewal of vines is obvious, we are reducing the global bank of germoplasm by planting the same vine clons and reducing the amount of biodiversity. So we must be careful and accept to pay a premium for keeping this old vines alive. Of course there’s an extra problem….. how many of this pre phylloxera vines are real….
Re: Old Vines
Ver mensaje de Paco HigónWell, 20 is old by most New World standards. I wish all ";Old Vines"; labels referred to at least 20 year old vines...
Here in La Mancha we suffer/enjoy a lot of Richard Smartitys. That is great for the region. Sure there are old vines, but if someone can come and produce very good stuff from less than 5 year old vines...well...you won’t find me complaining!
Right now there are several Syrah bottlings (Vallegarcía, Finca Sandoval) ranking among Spain’s best that are born in relatively new plantings. The remarkably good Agios (90% Cencibel) is a child of Smart-trained viticulture, and we all know the role he played in Dominio de Valdepusa.
A totally different question is of course whether these techniques would stand up in greatness against old-vine examples in regions such as Priorat...
Re: Old Vines
Ver mensaje de Paco HigónThe marketing is interesting now that I think about it. Obviously there are not a lot of ancient vineyards, which of course means that there is precious little wine that is made from such rare vines. Of course knowing a wine’s history, that it comes from a particularly prized vineyard, makes one pause over one’s glass and take it more seriously. As Auberon Waugh suggested, a wine tastes much better when you can reflect on your good fortune to be drinking it when so many other people want to be drinking it too, but can’t because of its scarcity.
;)