Spain will be the star?
About Toro, touché...
Ver mensaje de WaltZalenskiShould have clarified the geographic distinctions, yes. Or maybe not used the word ";Mediterranean"; at all, since what is being proposed is the dominance of big, hypertrophic wines. Of course, too many ";Mediterranean"; wines are precisely that, but not all wines that are precisely that come from Mediterranean areas. So, touché.
That Priorat may have already overtaken Rioja, in commercial terms, is wishful thinking. Or not. If there are numbers to prove me wrong, I’d like to see them. In terms of the quality, cellarworthiness and sheer value of the wines, I truly don’t think so. Will trade you Clos Whateverus ";Cuvée Hifalutibus"; for a nice ’64 Bosconia any day.
The point of my calling attention to all this is that Mr. Parker is equating the Ribera del Duero--a region that, as my friend Gerry Dawes has correctly pointed out, apart from Vega Sicilia, was generating only coop wines to drink within the year until relatively recently... Believe me, I remember the first Pesqueras that really put the DO on the map; beyond that, what was there?--to Rioja. Sorry, but that only works if you are a chronic historical revisionist.
Toro? Well, we’ll see... But honestly, I think the area doesn’t have what it takes to produce real grands vins. Ditto for Jumilla. I am opened to persuasion, but remain doubtful for the time being.
Priorat? Well, if producers could only keep their alcohol levels in check and use better judgment (i.e. something other than blindly following the latest enofashion)in their wood treatments, perhaps we’ll have something real.
M.
Re: About Toro, touché...
Ver mensaje de MCamblorYour friend Jancis says, in effect, that Priorats typically are a terriorista’s wet dream. And somewhere along the line this region seems to have sprouted the letters ";D.O.Ca.";, a distinction shared only with Rioja, which presumably has something to do with how the wines are regarded in Spain. I happen to think that the average quality of Priorat is hard to beat - but of course it is a small region with tiny yields and is not dragged down by countless bulk producers.
As for Toro’s potential, obvious Mariano Garcia and Vega Sicilia think there is something there. And speaking of gran vins, I inderstand that Cheval Blanc now has a property there.
Toro also brings to mind matters authenticity in Spanish wine styles, which we have debated before. One recent tidbit that I came accross: some records recently were unearthed showing that two of the Spanish wines that won gold medals at the 1929 Barcelona worlds fair had alcohol contents of 16%.
Heads up, Manuel: Franey Wines in East Hampton is direct-importing 10 vintages of Bosconia dating back to 1942
Re: Spain will be the star?
Ver mensaje de Juan SuchI’m glad Parker shares my few on Spain’s potential. I think this is something new for him. Certainly he has given Spain relatively little attention during his career.
A minor comment about this part of the quote: ";Spain, just coming out of a long period of cooperative winemaking that valued quantity over quality...."; This is the standard formulation regarding improving quality, but is it really the key the improvements Spain has made? Certainly there are and have been huge bulk producers of cheap plonk, and perhaps these producers have been most noticable in the marketplace before and are less so now. But I think statistics show that, relative to other major wine producing countries, the vine yields in Spain are far lower and that this has been the case for a long time. Perhaps this means that Spain has long had the vines, but is only recently catching up with up-to-date vinification. Does this more accurately explain Spain’s new success?
Ah, 1929...
Ver mensaje de WaltZalenskiI have absolutely no doubts about the potential for terroir expression in Priorat wines. I rmember back in the mid-eighties, when all that emerged out of the region were the rustic, rough-and-tumble, cheapie reds of Scala Dei, that one could notice the peculiar qualities of the soil and the climate the grapes grew in. And there’s something to be said about minerality that can manage to speak even when buried under a ton of oak. Potential? Yep, probably. But first things have to come under control and the fashionistas stopped.
As far as Mariano’s or Vega Sicilia’s, or Cheval Blanc’s experiments in Toro are concerned, I say go ahead, try it... But don’t expect me to take those names as guarantees. The proof will be in future bottles. So far, I have yet to be impressed. Mariano’s San Román (I do keep a vertical since the 1997, his first) is good wine, but I can’t say I’ve ever felt inclined to start calling it ";great."; The Vega Sicilia experiment I only had once, from a barrel sample brought to us by Florian Miquel Hermann after he visited the bodega. Also good, but not quite great.
I guess my main problem with Mr. Parker’s statement is this whole competition thing, which seems to me too prosaic. In my case, I let Bordeaux be Bordeaux, Burgundy be Burgundy, the Rhône be the Rhône, the Loire be the Loire... Each region makes distinct wines and has its own history. So should it be with Rioja, the Ribera del Duero, Priorat, Bierzo, Navarra... Just like sometimes I feel like having La DOminique, sometimes VCC, sometimes Pape-Clément, sometimes a Musigny, or Volnay, or even a red Chassagne, sometimes a Touraine Gamay, sometimes a Chinon, sometimes a Cornas, and can count on the differences to be there, rising above any competitiveness in the market, so should it be with Spain. Lamentably, Parker’s construct does not allow for this.
And hey, by the way, people could have been dead-ass wrong in 1929, too.
Thanks for the tip on the Bosconias. I’ll check on prices and shipping.
M.
According to statistics? Uhmm... so what about...
Ver mensaje de MaJesusStocastic (or estocastic I don’t remember the english word to say this) processes? ;)))
Cheers,
Jose
Re: And... so where is the evidence?
Ver mensaje de Daniel P.WhitakerPart of the problem is what he means by becoming ";stars"; or ";overtaking"; Rioja or Ribera del Duero. I suspect that in the way he means it - price, critical acolades, collectability, fashionability (not sales volume) - his prediction as it realates to Priorat is already true. This is the best type of prediction to make: predicting something that has already occured. Priorat is a D.O.Ca. Ribera del Duero is not. This is not to say that Priorat does not produce great juice. It does and, as is often the case, there is reason for all the hype.
I could easily see Toro being the equal of Ribero del Duero in 2015. As Manuel points out elsewhere in this discussion, in many ways Ribera del Duero is just a baby too (with the single exception of Vega Sicilia).
Jumilla? OK this one I don’t believe. But I think there are other DOs that he did not name that will have something close to Priorat’s current status in 2015.
I don’t know. In fact, I don’t buy it.
Ver mensaje de WaltZalenskiI recently spent four months in a country where there are quite a few serious collectors. some of which I got to know a little --the difference with collectors from elsewhere being, according to what I saw, that they drink the wine, instead of trade it for financial gains.
For those guys,
Priorat is L’Ermita and Clos Erasmus
Rioja is Cirsion and Aurus
Ribera is Pingus and Vega Sicilia
Think about it... These are fashionable wines, excluding perhaps Vega. In my opinion, in terms of sheer quality none of them is above the other --even if we accept the fact that these wines can be erratic, especially Erasmus; and some have a long standing pedigree, such as Vega.
To the eyes of many, these wines represent the very best each region has to offer --for the time being at least.
So, can we say that Ermita, Erasmus, Mogador, and other priorats have taken over Rioja and its Cirsion, Aurus, Contador, etc? And what about Pingus and Vega? Where do they stand against each other? It looks pretty balanced to me.
DPW
twitter.com/daniel_pw
Al buen amigo, dale tu pan y dale tu vino
Welcome
Ver mensaje de Daniel P.WhitakerDaniel,
Pardon me if I am forgetting your prior appearance here on this forum, but it seems to me that this is the first discussion in which we have the benefit of your comments. Welcome!