Your wine selection
Your cart is empty
Our indexed repository on Spanish wine
Spain’s elegant new wine wave
|
|
"Spain hasn’t always been the first port of call for lovers of elegance in wine. Traditionally you’d look to the country for oak, applied with varying degrees of finesse, or, more recently, for wines that were big, powerful and not shy with the alcohol. But, as a recent event in London aimed to show, Spanish wine has become so much more varied and, yes, elegant in the past decade or so. "
In fino veritas
|
|
"He says now he is glad he waited a while before deciding to concentrate on a fino-like table wine that is not as potent as sherry: so a dry wine from sherry vineyards that has a similar yeasty flavour as fino but is only about 12% alcohol rather than being increased to 15% by added alcohol as decreed for fino by the sherry authorities."
Collecting on a budget – Iberia
|
|
"The rash of new Rioja producers, many nowadays producing geographically specific bottlings rather than blends, tend to release their wines earlier than the historic bodegas, for obvious financial reasons. But many of them are making very exciting wines that are well worth ageing."
Sherry, undiscovered treasure
|
|
"As one of the great wines of the world, unique to Andalucía, sherry is capable of far more nuance than this and producing the vast array of dry styles is far more difficult than making most other sorts of wines."
10 Dynamic Wines From Spain to Drink Now
|
|
"Great bottles are being made all over the world, but right now no country’s are as exciting or compelling as Spain’s. Spain is the most dynamic wine-producing country in the world."
Wineries. Tradición
|
|
"Launching the business with exclusively old wines in stock was a risky bet. In those years, with sherry’s popularity in the doldrums, they managed to sell only a few hundred bottles, a figure that nowadays has increased to 20,000. Nevertheless, their focus is quality, not quantity. The whole aging and bottling process is artisanal -each and every bottle is sealed manually and all front labels have their drawn-off date, lot and bottle number written by hand. Traditional high ceilings and sandy soils adorn the bodega, which has five criaderas (levels of storage) for all its wines except Palo Cortado, which has three, more common in Jerez."
Sherry, but not like your granny might have liked to sip
|
|
There are signs that a new generation of wine drinkers is turning to dry sherry, especially as a partner to tapas and tasting plates. I will look at paler styles of sherry once the weather improves, but today, the darker side – amontillados and olorosos, plus a very tasty sweet sherry.
New horizons for biological ageing
|
|
"Anywhere else in the world, the fact that millions of living organisms appear in wine while ageing would make all the alarms would go off. But in Jerez, it’s quite the opposite. There, winemakers have learned over time how to “domesticate” this phenomenon to make wines as unique as Fino and Manzanilla."
Great bottles are being made all over the world, but right now no country’s are as exciting or compelling as Spain’s.
|
|
Nowhere else do I see such a concentration of thoughtful, talented and inventive winemakers from all parts of a country offering such a profusion of exceptional wines that are both true to tradition yet innovative." (New York Times)
Where Spanish wine might go
|
|
"Meanwhile, the quality of Spanish wine and the average value of a litre of it has been climbing steadily, as doubtless anyone living in Spain has noticed. This has coincided with a dramatic upgrade in status and image for wine as a subject in Spain. Wine connoisseurship has become a perfectly respectable leisure pursuit for middle class Spaniards rather than a thoroughly agricultural, peasant activity. It was not always like this." (Jancisrobinson.com)
Your Next Lesson: Fino Sherry
|
|
"Despite the alcohol level, good fino is delicate in texture and great with food. It should never feel heavy, and the best finos are complex and refreshing. Manzanilla is a particular form of fino sherry produced only in the seaside town of Sanlúcar de Barrameda, where it develops a tangy sea-salt aroma and a texture that’s almost fragile compared with other finos." (New York Times)
Vignobles et vins du Nord-Ouest de l’Espagne
|
|
"Whilst this multidisciplinary approach turns wine into an exciting window on the world, the depth and detail of his descriptions, valley by valley and village by village, reveal the wealth and diversity of Spain's northwestern vineyards." (Spanish Wine Lover)
Recovering the magic of El Marco: back to the sherry vineyards, and old ways of making wines
|
|
"Willy Perez is one of a small group of winegrowers looking to revive Sherry as a fine wine, based on the vineyard, not the winemaking process. ‘The pago system was very important in the past,’ he says. ‘It’s not right now: everyone is blending grapes in the cooperatives.’The inventory of a winery was done by soil type. A ten-year-old wine from sand was cheaper than an albariza of just one year.’ He adds, ‘What I am trying to say is that soil used to be very important, more than ageing." (wineanorak.com)
On the renaissance of Spain’s Garnacha grape
|
|
"I would heartily concur — the country’s range of wine styles and interesting wine regions is multiplying rapidly." (Financial Times)
Spain: Aragón and Navarra – Garnacha Renaissance.
|
|
"Nothing replaces the experience of being there, but this is as close as it’s going to get for a while. As most of you will also probably be home when you first read this, I’m going to speed up my pace and try to bring shorter and more frequent articles to you, trying to take you on armchair-travels to some of my most beloved wine regions in Spain." (Robert Parker)
From the Land of Bold Reds: 10 Superb Spanish Whites
|
|
"On the whole, though, Spain brings to mind the world of red Riojas and Ribera del Dueros, Priorats and myriad others from the Mediterranean coast and the interior made of grapes like garnacha, monastrell and bobal. This is why I’ve been so intrigued over the last few years to taste such unusual and captivating white wines coming from every corner of Spain, from Galicia in the northwest to Catalonia in the northeast to Jerez in the south to the Canary Islands in the Atlantic... the rewards of these wines are plentiful, even if, for now, you have to keep them in the back of your mind until you find yourself looking at a great Spanish wine list or stumbling upon a wine shop that has invested in Spain. What makes them so unusual? The grapes for a start. These bottles are made of albariño, palomino, treixadura, godello and garnacha blanca, among a few others. You may encounter them elsewhere, as in Spain’s Iberian neighbor Portugal, but not often beyond that. Most of all, though, it’s the combination of searching for winemakers who are simultaneously looking backward and forward, conscientious farmers — just about all these wines are made from organic or biodynamically grown grapes or the equivalent — and Spain’s own singular wine culture." (The New York Times)
Priorat, worth the money?
|
|
"Priorat, as it is known in the local Catalan (Priorato in Castilian), is named after the priory established here in the hills above Tarragona by Carthusians who arrived from Provence in the 12th century, possibly bringing Garnacha (Grenache) vines with them. Certainly Garnacha was the variety of choice in what were extensive vineyards until the phylloxera louse arrived at the beginning of the 20th century. Thousands of hectares of vineyards and a flourishing industry making mainly sacramental wine had become just 600 hectares in a rugged, depopulated landscape by 1979 when René Barbier, brought up in the wine business to the north east in Penedès, first arrived and saw the potential of the ancient vines growing here." (Jancisrobinson.com)