August/10 wines and I hate summer...
August/10 wines and I hate summer...
- Muga Rosado 2009. Bodegas Muga. DOC Rioja (4,92 EUR)
Strawberrilectrical! As the summer goes one this wine too. Non-stop rosé. More!
- Dr. Loosen, Dr. L. 2009. Mosela-Saar-Ruwer (7.3 EUR)
Summertime. Pineapple and lemonade slightly fat due to the sugar touch. Stepbrother with german accent of the locals Castillo de San Diego or maybe Viña Sol or Esmeralda. Enough for the price.
- Blanco Nieva Verdejo 2009. Viñedos de Nieva. DO Rueda (6-7 EUR)
V-e-r-d-e-j-o. It's the name of this game. A verdejo from head to toe. Anis-seed, fruit of passion, pineapple, grass and the expected touch of bitterness. The acidity is there supporting everything.
- Langlois Château Brut Rosé. Crémant de Loire (13.86 EUR)
Coltrane? Who is Coltrane? There was a time when knowin' who's Diana Krall and even having at least one of her CDs was enough for being trendy or even ocassionally fashion. Nowadays you're just a Mr. Nobody unless you have a LP of John Coltrane (vinyl record obviously!) and of course it must be on your desk. You're trendy and everybody must know it! In addition to this you must have recorded in your i-pod everything about Pink Martini. Trendy? Fashion? What the hell! This bubbles are really nice! It's neither Champagne, nor Cava and I don't care whether it's a huge amount of points in any magazine or any critics does it really like or not. We're in the usual hot august and this bubbles are quite refreshing and an easy quaff. Do you want anything else?
- Langlois Château, Cremant de Loire. (9.9 EUR)
Some steps behind its rosé brother. Yep, it's refreshing, but it's also round-shaped with nothing to grab it. Embedded into itself and the bubbles slighlty rough maybe. Enough for the price.
- Domaine Tempier Rosé 2007. AOC Bandol. (22.9 EUR)
Tondonia hue and improve as it breaths. Spicy hints, water melon and touch of biterness and acidity. Steps behing the subtlety so... shortness simply.
- La Bota de Manzanilla Pasada 20 Bota Punta. Navazos
Mandatory. Manzanilla 20? It's the name of the sea rocked. It's impossible not to love this wine 'til the limits of passion. Stopped heart, rented soul and feel the sea as a captive seaman. Deep? Abyssal!
- Tricó 2007. Compañía de Vinos Tricó. DO Rías Baixas. (9-10 EUR)
Hey, it's nice! Wines from Rias Baixas use to be cloying or just forgettable... well... maybe I don't use to remember them 'cos they don't have anything that attracts me. Just me. So well... I would drink some bottles of this stuff. Tropical fruits that goes away before arrive, just fruit, citrical hints, white flowers. Everthing wrapped by the acidity backbone. Really nice with food. More.
- Patio Joven 2009. Vino Tinto de Mesa
Tons (and I mean tons!) of black olives and violet candies. Almost unexistent herbaceous hint finish. Spherical and extremely polished. That (not always so obvious) grape-character that reminds me the Mistela of Josefina Piñol.
- Domaine Chancelle, L'Epine 2008. Lydie et Thierry Chancell. AOC Saumur. (8.4 EUR)
Like a chardonnay at the beginnning… Light and easy, like a chardonnay-for-the-any-dinner-quaff. As days goes by it evolves. Keeps the acidity but with some other hints, some other edges and a touch of roughness. Ok.
- Gravonia Crza. 2000. López de Heredia. DOC Rioja (9 EUR)
(Quite) Young. Yellow prunes, white flowers, coffe and oak. As intense as its acidity. Long. There’s something in the finish that I don’t know how to define. Astringency? Tannins? I don’t know, it’s a sort of texture. It brings to my mind the white wine from Marqués de Murrieta (pre-Capellanía)
- Cueva del Rey 2009. Cueva del Rey, S.L. DO Ycoden-Daute-Isora
Enough. Easy quaff. It brings to my mind a sort of coupage with xarel.lo and albillo. I'm thinking about
Marqués de Alella Clásico and El Níspero.
Regards,
Jose
Re: August/10 wines and I hate summer...
Ver mensaje de joseTry whites from Tarragona (Priorat, Montsant, Terra Alta, made with White Garnacha.) I import some to Mexico. One of the best young wines (no oak), fresh, is made by Cellers Barbara Fores. Great summer wine at a bargain price.
Re: August/10 wines and I hate summer...
Ver mensaje de ComvinartOne of the zillions in the to-do wine-list are wines made with Garnacha Blanca. 'til the moment I didn't enjoyed so much. Too much alcohol, oak and toooo round-shaped :-/ So I'll have to keep on tasting.
Regards,
Jose
Re: August/10 wines and I hate summer...
Ver mensaje de joseDear Jose, you might hate summer (I can understand that, in your country). But over here, in the north-western regions of Europe, well, huraaaaaah, ¡¡¡summer!!! Not that August did anything in support of my love of nice sunshine: we had rain. Lots of rain. Twice as much as the statistics would apportion in a "standard" year.
"Blanco Nieva Verdejo" I remember two evenings we spent in a wonderful bar in Segovia (was it called "JoseMaría"?), where this wine was served, in the beautiful large Riedel-like wine-glasses so oft used in Spain. A perfect example of how crispy-fresh a Rueda/Verdejo wine can be. Testimony to how good some white wines in Spain really are (another example would be a -name forgotten (!)- Ribeiro I drank in the bar at the corner of the "Plaza Mayor" in Ribadávia (Galicia) during the medieval festival there: wonderful wine! And, I would add, not very expensive, either!
Re: August/10 wines and I hate summer...
Ver mensaje de BelgikYep, that restaurant in Segovia can be "Jose María"
Well... I dare many things changed in Spain last years... but nothing change in fact. Many DOs and wineries trying to convince their wines are better than those from other wineries from other countries and trying to fight with grapes like riesling, gewürztraminer... and forgetting viura, verdejo and so on...
Sigh.
Jose
Re: August/10 wines and I hate summer...
Ver mensaje de joseWell, Jose, I might give you a piece of my mind, completely distorted by the fact that, well, I'm simply not Spanish (but not from any other major wine producing country, either). In olden days us Flemish wine-amateurs were completely taken-in by French wines. Not even German! Spanish whites? Uffff...negligeable. Except for those strange people who had a particular liking for Spain, not the vacationeers to the coastal regions, but people who developed an understanding and ..love.. for a more "cultural" concept of what Spain was, might have been, and isn't, in fact. From dubious, possibly including bulls, to rotundly brilliant. History. Lots of it. White wines? Well, some of us would, at times, drink a wine from Jerez, a Fino or Manzanilla. But those were "particular wines", not really what most people called "white wine". Some of us, sometimes, had a chance to taste white Rioja wines: old fashioned, oaky but ...remarkable wines. I remember a 1978 Murrieta I drank the last bottle of after 2000; the other 11 bottles were drunk much, much too early. I'm a steadfast supporter of the old viura grape; tonight I'm opening a bottle, in fact, and I'm shocked that the Rioja consejo would tend to, well, join-in in the encouragement of Chardonnay (¿do they?) But, by and large, there were no other Spanish white wines to be found, back in those virtual middle-ages, before Juan Carlos proved his excellence to his people and to Europeans in general. ¿Nowadays? Well, to be frank, the Spanish white wines in Belgium, I'm talking "non specialist supermarket market", are still limited to the odd, cheaper,(Rueda) Verdejo or "Marques de Cáceres" white (with very little character) or even anonymous Valdepeñas...plunk, in that case. In Belgium, Spain still is not considered a "white wine country". You will not, in a supermarket situation, run into Ribeiro, Albariño, the better Ruedas, Rioja Viuras are extinct and ...the other Spanish white wines I don't even know the existence of.
With red wines, the situation is far better: Belgians drink red. If it be any consolation to you, most Belgian supermarkets don't even carry ++good++ German Riesling, or even Alsacian: most is "plunk", big brands. Ah... ¡money! there's never enough of it.
P.S. Yes, I confirm: the Jose Maria. I invited my University of Salamanca professor "20th century Spanish History" (a 3-month course for foreign students of the Castilian languaje) to that restaurant's bar...to do my exam right there and then (since I only did the 2-week course, I was dispensed. But I wanted to do the exam, "soy orgulloso"), so I ordered two copitas! A year earlier, I'd gone there with my wife, where we also drank a good Ribero de Duero wine, "Pago de Carraovejas". I think the "dueño" is (part) owner of the pago.
Ah, Jose, I drank so much Spanish wine that I now have Spanish blood in my veins. ¡Enough añoranza!
Allow me to greet you, Sir.
Pablo
Re: August/10 wines and I hate summer...
Ver mensaje de BelgikI do really enjoy reading and learning how was this stuff about wine years ago. I think it let's place the current days in a proper position.
On the other hand I think that currently the wine consumption you say is the same for spanish wine drinkers. Not for winegeeks (mmm... or maybe also), but for the big numbers I think it's the same. White spanish wines don't use to be neither drank, nor seen, as serious wine. Wine must be red :-/ or it's not wine. Rosé... what the hell is this? excepting that think called Lambrusco or the spanish one Peñascal. Sometimes people drink a bottle of Ribeiro, Albariño... maybe in a birthday or for Crhistmas...
We, winegeeks, are just a spot in the ocean.
And yep, the person who run Jose Maria is also part of Pago de Carraovejas.
Kind regards,
Jose
Re: August/10 wines and I hate summer...
Ver mensaje de joseThank you Jose. I think we have an understanding of one another. Life is short.