Tanzer on Spain
Call me a traitor...
Ver mensaje de Paco Higón...But I think it’s very Spanish to buy $10,000,000 worth of wines and then store them just anywhere. I see that all the time. Pecados Originales BOASTS temp-controlled cellars in the summer, pretty conscious of the fact that their policy sounds exceptional, not just common sense.
Maybe it’s my being from Tenerife, where that ’eternal spring’ syndrome makes people (FALSELY) believe we have privileged temperatures year round...It may be so for Scandinavian tourists, but certainly NOT for wine cellaring...
Re: Call me a traitor...
Ver mensaje de GastronautaSo Ernesto - you’re saying that you actually encounter more baked Spanish wine, both in Spain and in the US, than ";average?";
Re: Call me a traitor...
Ver mensaje de GastronautaWell, I haven’t tried ANY Spanish wine here in the USA for practical reasons (liver capacity vs unlimited choice) but in Tenerife both distributors and retailers (most, not all, of course) used to have a VERY loose concept of cellar temperature.
I’d rarely have (seriously) cooked wine there but simply because I only bought fresh stuff from reliable guys (kind of an insider in the biz after so many years). I just never trusted anything that had been on unfamiliar shelves for over six months or through a summer.
What I mean about Spain is that many middlemen deal with wine as a merchandise the way they’d handle shoes or deodorant. We are lucky we don’t get more cooked wine.
That said, I don’t consider it a problem in Spain (at least not vs the cooking at retailer level), but I hear (ie ’read’) LOTS about cooked Spanish wine in the USA, so I guess the wise guys are still doing their ";save a penny there"; trick.
In that sense the Canary Islands behaved a bit like an export market. When I first read outraged reports of Pesquera corks I knew what they meant...
Re: Call me a traitor...
Ver mensaje de GastronautaAh yes. The notorious Pequera corks of older vintages. Great wine, leaky bottles. I can see how this is good example of the problem that you are trying to characterize.