Hi-ho! Hi-ho! To Fenavin I Went

Three days at a fair like FENAVIN was too much for me! I had a great time (socially and wine-tasting-wise) but it was excessive "work-wise", ie making contacts with importers and distributors, etc. Basically, because my production is so small, I already have all the importers and distributors I need this year anyway! And being nice to people for 8 hrs/day, 3 days in a row was really trying!!! I'd much rather have been alone in my vineyard!!!

Our stand "Caballo de Troya"

(my barrel is the left- most one with the"I'll be back" sign attached)

There were 14 of us who got together to rent a space in common so as to save on expenses; all of us more or less small-ish artisan-type producers of organic and/or natural wines. Each producer had one barrel.

Technically and logistically, everything worked out just fine, thanks to Jose Miguel Márques (Bodega Marenas) who coordinated between us and the fair organizers, and to Julian Ruiz (Esencia Rural) who kindly provided the barrels that we used to display our wines.

Socially, I devirtualized quite a few friends form Twitter and FB, and also made a few that have still to be virtualized!!!

I had a pocketful of visiting cards, but unfortunately have managed to lose them all; and of course now I can't remember the names of all the people who came to taste my wines! But here are some that I do remember:

Nacho Bueno, Spanish wine-blogger; sponsor of one of my oak casks (see this post), and collaborator in the creation of the 2010 coupage "Los Cinco en Punto"

Ignacio Segovia, organizer of The Winebus, running wine-tourism visits to wineries within a radius of about 2 hours from Madrid. Hopefully, he will organize a visit to me, when I have a winery that is 'visitable' one day!!! :)

Sam Caldwell, owner of SMC Fine Wines, who distributes to restaurants and winebars in La Mancha

A trio of Frenchmen (living in Spain): Carlos Campillo, of Petit Bistrot fame, the only winebar/restaurant in Madrid exclusively serving natural wines. Benoit Valée, importer of French and Spanish natural wines, to his new winebar, L'Anima del Vi in Barcelona, and Jean Jacques (surname?) soon to be starting a wine project in Madrid.

Mar Galvan, a professional wine-taster and writer, (for Verema among other publications), who took this photo of me!

Me and my barrel

Mónica Fernández Bobadilla, export manager at Pago Casa del Blanco, came to visit several times a day, so she could step out of her high heels and relax from the very serious and corporate ambiance at her own winery's stand!

who else?...


I have two interesting anecdotes worth mentioning (both involving food and wine! How surprising!):

Tuesday night

After closing up the shop at 7 o'clock (ie, rinsing out wineglasses, tidying up, etc) I was milling around trying to decide what to do for dinner, when my problem was instantly solved by Samuel Cano (fellow natural wine producer, from La Mancha), who'd booked a table for 10 at a restaurant, and invited me along. So we drove to Daimiel (about 20 mins away from Ciudad Real) and parked right next to the restaurant (which is of course impossible to do in Madrid!). It was a low, white-washed, traditional-looking building right in the centre of town, called El Bodegón. Inside, the decor was really nice (ye olde traditional style, tiles, exposed wooden beams, etc). In fact it used to be a bodega, and they'd kept some of the machinery and features for decoration. Downstairs in the basement, they had kept the 'tinajas' (large clay vats for fementing wine) and cut out a doorway into each one; and inside each vat was a table for two!! How romantic is that?

But we had a round table for 10 upstairs. I was expecting some traditional food from La Mancha, ie solid, consistent, no-nonsense energy-giving food, but was I in for a surprise!  It turns out that the restaurant did 'nouvelle cuisine' or 'fusion' or whatever it's called! So we were served plate after plate (I lost count after the 12th!) of intricate and complex delicacies (tiny portions on large plates!). They were all very tasty and interesting, but it's not really my style. It was in fact the first time that I'd had such a 'dining experience'. I'm really glad to have done it, but I don't think I'd do it again, if other options were available! I think we were given special treatment (as Samuel is a friend of the owner!) and we 'only' paid €55 each. This is a huge amount for me to spend on dinner, but on the way out I saw the menu at the front door and noticed that each one of those tiny plates we had cost an average of €20!!!! And we weren't charged for any wine, because we'd all brought our own!

Wednesday night

Action replay at 7 o'clock, milling around, and this time my problem was solved by Roberto (surname?), winemaker at Suertes del Marques (Tenerife). He was going round collecting bottles of wine and inviting people to a paella for dinner at the house he was staying at. Which was in Alcolea de Calatrava, about 20 mins from Ciudad Real. It was a sort of bungalow, with a large back garden and all the infrastructure needed for a barbeque, ie firewood, charcoal, grill, kitchen, table and chairs, etc!

Two paellas were planned (a vegeatable one and seafood one), but unfortunately a Frenchman was in charge of the cooking, and he burnt the first one!! For the record, it was Sebastien (surname?), who makes natural wine in Alicante! But to the important business of the evening: Roberto had managed to collect 28 different bottles of wine, which we all proceeded to taste blind, to see if we could guess at least the variety and the region. Well, I was in the presence of some awsome and experienced expert tasters (like Juan Ponce, Gregory Perez, Mal Galvan, Alfredo Maestro, and more etc), while I couldn't taste my way out of a paper bag, so I was just tasting and listening and learning.

Round about wine #12, I thought that I knew what the wine was, but I didn't dare to speak up, and lo-and-behold, when the bottle was uncovered, I was right - it was an oak-aged Albillo.

Then at around wine #20+, I was pretty sure that it was a Garnacha. The experts were humming-and-hawing and not committing themselves, so this time I just blurted it out. And it was! :)  That just goes to show, that if you practice enough and remember the wines you taste, you really can learn. I managed to identify that Garnacha, because I take every opportunity I can to taste Garnachas, and have been doing so for about three years! Even so, I couldn't identify the region!

Eventually at about midnight, the paella was ready, and it turned out very nicely!

Paella in the making

Then, more wine and wine conversations till about 4:00 a.m. We talked wine for the entire 8 hours that we were there! Amazing! No talk about football, politics, filmstars, or any of that other stuff that people tend to talk about. Absolutely brilliant.

I have to say that I behaved myself admirably, as I was driving. So I actually spat (most of) the wines we tasted blind, and then I stopped drinking altogether after the paella. Which brings me to the last anecdote: I was driving back to our own bungalow (on the other side of Ciudad Real) with Alfredo Maestro, who had promptly fallen asleep as soon as we set off! And he didn't even wake up when I got stopped by the police, and had to furnish documents and explanations!!! They didn't give me a breathalizer test, but I think I would have passed it if they had. So, home and in bed by 5:00 am. Not bad, considering!

Conclusion

Would I go again to a similar fair? Well, for the wining and dining and networking and conversational experiences, yes. But not to sell wine or 'make contacts'!  And I'd think twice about going to a fair for 3 days in a row!

And talking about wining and dining experiences, I'm going to end this post with a rant against Spaniards and Spain in general - because I've been living here long enough, and paying Spanish taxes for long enough, to have the right to complain!!!!  And what I'm complaining about is the absolutely appalling and shameful quality (and quantity) of the catering services provided at Fenavin. They consisted of a large functional cafeteria, of the type you used to see at airports, railway stations and bus-stations. No table service. Only 2 barmen attending hundreds of customers at the bar. I managed to get a beer after about 15 mins (but only because I saw someone I knew getting served and I got him to sneak my order in!). I didn't bother trying to get anything to eat, but went outside instead. Where the situation wasn't any better. There was a street with 4 or five bar/restaurants serving lunch. But did they buy extra food for the 3 days of the fair? Did they put out extra tables? Did they hire a few more waiters, to attend to literally thousands of extra customers from the fair?  No, they didn't! Go figure what's going through the bar owners' and fair organizer's heads, if anything! Oh well. I wasn't too bothered myself, because I'm used to it, but what must foreign visitors be thinking? What kind of an impression would they be taking home with them?

Hi-ho, hi-ho, to Fenavin I go

In a few weeks there's a big wine fair here in Spain, called Fenavin , which I believe is the biggest, most serious, and most commercial wine fair held in Spain, and it'll be full of men dressed in suits!

Fenavin Wine Fair
(photo by El Crisol de Ciudad Real)

"What's that got to do with me or with Vinos Ambiz?" I hear you ask, and in fact I'm asking myself the same thing!!!  Well it's too late to back out now (and I've already paid up!) so I'll be going - on Tue 7th, Wed 8th and Thurs 9th May, in Ciudad Real (La Mancha, Spain).

This is the result of a bright idea over lunch one day last year, when a bunch of winemakers decided what
a cool idea it would be to gatecrash a mainstream, commercial winefair!! So one thing led to another and
here we are!  The name of the group we've registered under is "Caballo de Troya" which means Trojan Horse.

There are now 14 of us and we've taken a big empty space where we will offer our wines, each on our own
barrel or table. We've decided to be minimalist, so we haven't hired a stand or anything. This has the advantage of keeping our costs down, and maybe the importers tasting our wines will be able to focus better on them, without being distracted by fancy decorations and hostesses in short skirts! We didn't even want to put down carpet and just use the raw concrete floor, but the organizers informed us that we weren't allowed to do that!

Alfredo Maestro (Bodegas Maestro Tejero) Ribera de Duero
Charlotte Allen (Almaroja) Zamora
Fabio Bartolomei (Vinos Ambiz) Madrid and Gredos
Friedrich Schatz (Bodega Schatz) Ronda
José Miguel Márquez (Marenas) Cordoba
Juan Pascual (Viña Enebro) Murcia
Julian R. Villanueva (Esencia Rural) Toledo
Manuel and Lorenzo Valenzuela (Barranco Oscuro) Granada
Miguel J. Márquez (Dagon) Valencia
Nicolás Marcos (Dominio del Urogallo) Asturias
Rafa López (Sexto Elemento) Valencia
Ramón Saavedra (Cauzón) Granada
Samuel Cano (Patio) CuencaTodd Blomberg (Benito Santos) Galicia

You can find us here:

Pavilion: NOE
Street: 5
Stand: 11


Now I have even more tasks to do! ... bottling up different wines, sticking on labels, printing out info sheets, printing out business cards, looking for somewhere to stay for 2 nights, etc, etc, ...

Pruning, Planting, Bottling, Looking for a Bodega, Tastings, ...

Pruning

Well, it's pruning season again this year, and I'm running late again. There's just so much to do, apart from pruning, and apart from holding down a day-job and seeing my wife and kids every now and then!

Carabaña vineyard, half pruned

The ideal period for pruning, in my opinion, is between when the leaves fall off the vines (in December, more or less) and when the sap starts to flow (in spring more or less). This is because if you prune before the sap stops flowing or after it starts flowing, then you're removing valuable nutrients and strength from the vine. Some of my neighbouring grapegrowers start really early, before the leaves have fallen off, and some even do a pre-pruning at the same time as the harvest!!! Surely not good for the vines in the long term?

Unpruned vine

In Carabaña and in Villarejo the sap has started flowing. It's called the "lloro" in Spanish, which means 'weeping'. I've finished pruning in Carabaña, but I've only just started in Villarejo and it will take me another week to finish there. Oh well, at least I'm not running so late as last year, when the vines had actually started sprouting little leaves. In early May!!!

Planting

At last, after 10 years of talking about it and thinking about it, but not actually doing anything about it, I'm going to plant new vines in the empty spaces in the Carabaña vineyard. There are about 200 of them. I've done a bit of research and asked around already, and it seems that one of the most important things to consider is the choice of rootstock. Apart from the usual criteria, like climate, resistance to certain diseases, etc, in this case it's important to bear in mind that the new vines are going to be planted in an existing vineyard, as opposed to a totally new vineyard. So the rootstock has to be extra vigorous so as to be able to survive and thrive against the competition of their neighbouring old vines, which already have a deep and extensive root system.

If you look carefully at this above photo, you can see a few of these spaces.

I still haven't decided what variety to graft onto the rootstock. I could just go for Tempranillo or Airén, which are already in the vineyard, or go for an 'interesting' but unknown and uncommercial local variety, like Malvar or Torrontés (a Madrid variety, not to be confused with the Argentinean Torrontés or the Gallician Torrontés).

BTW, there's a local saying which goes: "Torrontés, ni la comas ni la des, que para buen vino es!", and which translates as something like: Torrontés, don't eat it or give it away, it's for making good wine, yay!

Then, apart from the empty spaces, there are also the vines which have run wild, ie the rootstock itself has sprouted and the grafted variety has died. Here I have the choice of uprooting the whole vine and planting a new one, or cutting it back and grafting a variety onto the existing rootstock. There are about 50 of these wild vines. And there are also about 50 old vines which have died but which are still in the ground. These have to be uprooted and new ones planted.

But one thing at a time! This year I'm just going to plant in the empty spaces and leave the wild vines and dead vines for another year!

Bottling

At the same time as the pruning, I've also been bottling up. On days when it's been raining too much to be able to go prune. I don't usually do this, but just bottle up from the tanks as orders come in all through the year. Which is convenient in the short term, but there comes a time, before the harvest, when I have to free up all the tanks, and so have to bottle everything that's left all at once. So this should gain me some extra time and peace of mind during harvest preparation time in August!

Yours truly bottling up some Malvar

Lo-tech gravity-driven bottling line

Looking for a Bodega

What a nightmare! What a country to try and do business in! Here we are in the middle of the longest deepest economic recession since the Great Depression of 1930, and there are hundreds of empty buildings, and even actual wineries, for rent everywhere. But is it simple, easy and straight-forward to rent one and start a wine business? No way, José! You'd think that local authorities would be interested in helping, or at least not hindering, small business startups, but unfortunately, it's not the case. The amount of red-tape and bureaucratic obstacles is just ridiculous. I'm not talking about sensible and valid requirements, like safe electrical installations, water connections, fire extinguishers, ventilation, etc, which is perfectly fine. I'm talking about other requirements like having to present an official project description, which you can't just type up yourself, but have to pay an 'expert' to do. And funnily enough it's usually the municipal architect/planning officers who say that as it happens they themselves can do those reports AND sign them off quickly and that'll be €2000 please, thank you very much! And other 'obstacles' which just magically disappear when money is passed! Oh well, mustn't complain! I will find a way!

Tastings

Thank goodness for tastings! Where would we be, and what would life be like without tastings? I hate to think! Anyway, I remember at least two tastings that I was at recently! The first was a tasting of some of my own new wines from 2012: a white (Airén), a red (Garnacha) and an 'orange' (Malvar). It was at Le Petit Bistrot, a bar/restaurant in Madrid, where they exclusively serve natural wines. The only natural winebar in Madrid - incredible but true. How can a country that produces 50 gazillion liters of wine every year only have one natural winebar in its capital city? Don't all shout out at once! Anyway, the tasting was a small, informal affair, with about 15 people, and I chatted and tasted with them all and answered their questions. I didn't have to give a speech or presentation in the end, though I'd prepared one!

The other tasting was even more informal, as it was just a bunch of friends who decided to get together one evening and do a blind Garnacha tasting just for fun, and see if we could guess where the Garnacha came from. We did it in the Vinoteca Pelayo in the Chueca district of Madrid. In the end we were not very successful at all in guessing the regions, even though some of the people there were experienced tasters, and in the wine trade!

A Bottle of Garnacha!

Visits

I also did another two mini-tastings with two Spanish journalists/bloggers in the space of 4 days from each other. Just like the number 27 bus, which never comes and then two come along at once! The first was Joan Gómez Pallarés, who apart from being a food/wine blogger, is a professor of Classical Literature at Barcelona university. He is currently on a month's leave and is touring round Spain, tasting regional foods and wines, and blogging about them, and he included me in his itinerary. He's already written a wonderful post (in Spanish) on his blog about his visit.

The next visit was from Mar Galván, who is a writer and professional wine-taster. She has her own blog here for her poetry and writings, and she also writes wine-related articles for Verema, which is the biggest Spanish language online wine site. A few days after her visit to me, she was participating in the final round of El Nariz de Oro ("The Golden Nose") blind tasting competition.

Mar Galván in the Villarejo Vineyard

Panoramic view of the Villarejo vineyard, taken by Mar

Labelling (mostly) and Planting a Vineyard in Scotland (maybe)

Last month (Feb 2013) I had to prepare several pallets of different wines to ship to New York and to California, as quickly as possible. I thought I could do it in a few days, but it was slow, slow work, as I had to do it all by hand, not being the owner of any automatic (or even semi-automatic) labelling machinery!

(For details of the wines shipping out, see this previous post/page).

The first step is to make the box:

Boxes and separators (2)



Here (above) you can see the actual boxes, all folded up, and behind them, the separators, which have to be placed inside.

Boxes and separators (2)

Boxes ready to go

Here (above) you can see the boxes made up. The procedure is: Pick up box, open it up, turn upside-down, sticky tape along the seam, and another strip perpendicular.

Then, turn box the right way up, insert the separators, and the boxes are ready.

Bottles of wine

The wine was stored like so (above), in the space between the row of barriques and the wall, which luckily just happend to be about 40 cm! Otherwise I don't know where I could have stored them!

Another shot of the stored bottles (below), also in the barrel room, at 18ºC:

Stored bottles

The labels look like this (below). They are peel-off self-adhesive labels

Labels

Here’s a close-up (below) of the front and back labels for the Titulciano 2010 coupage:

Front and back label

Bottles in the boxes

Pallet on which to stack the boxes

Quality control at lunch

First layer

My friend Monica came out to help me one day. She’s the export manager for Pago Casa del Blanco, one of the only 13 Pagos in all of Spain (Pagos are at the very top of the Spanish wine quality pyramid - above normal D.O.'s and D.O.Ca's)



Monica sticking labels

Very pretty, but is it art?  :)

Planting a Vineyard in Scotland

What? Are you crazy? Yes, considering the evidence and past history, I suppose I must be! I’ve had this crazy idea in my head for years, but finally this year I managed to do a field trip up north to check out the lie of the land. Mainly, I just wanted to eliminate the possibility of planting a vineyard in Scotland, so I could have one less thing to fret about, but (un)fortunately – depending on which way you look at it – my fretting days are not yet over!

We chose a place, more at less at random, but with a few criteria: close to Glasgow (1 or 2 hrs drive), West Coast (less harsh climate than the east coast!), in a possible micro-climate (clue, near a Botanic Garden, of which there are a surprising amount in Scotland!). So we ended up in town of Inverary.

The first stop was the Oyster bar on Loch Fyne, where they serve fresh local oysters from Loch Fyne :).  The presence of this bar had nothing to do with our choice of destination!

Then on to the Botanic Gardens at Crary, where we observed the presence of all sorts of palm trees and other exotic, tropical plants (well, semi-tropical!).

Then back to Inverary itself for lunch, in the George Hotel, for some traditional fare in the form of a pub-lunch. Beautiful building, brilliant beer, but ‘traditional’ Scottish food, ie deep-fried fish and chips – I’d forgotten that it was possible to put much batter on a fish!!!



Anyway, so am I going to plant a vineyard in Scotland? Well, I would certainly like to try! It depends on my circumstances here in Spain! Physically and geographically and climatologically, I think it’s possible. Not easy, but possible. The only thing that worries me is why no-one else has thought of this already!!! You know what I mean? Every time you think you have an original bright idea, you search on Google, and a gazillion hits come up!!! But (worryingly), I could only find one (1) vineyard already planted in Scotland. Here: link. Sorry, I don't have any photos of the stunningly beautiful scenery, and exotic plants around Inverary :(

Another Geeky Natural Wine Transport Post (and more)

Following close in the wake of two pallets which have already safely landed in New York, another three pallets of natural wine from Vinos Ambiz (and six pallets from Alfredo Maestro) are on their way to the port of Oakland, California. They are aboard the good ship "Bellavia" who just left the port of Sines (Portugal) a few days ago and is right now somewhere in the middle of Atlantic Ocean bearing a precious cargo of natural wines from different producers from Spain, thanks to importer Jose Pastor Selections. She is due to arrive at the Panama Canal on 17th March.

The Good Ship Bellavia

 (© Patrick Lawson, MarineTraffic.com)

Oh, we sailed on the good ship Bellavia

Out of Arabia and into Moldavia
Cried the crew “No, no more natural wine!
“Give us back our grog and our brine”
or we’ll sail her and sink her in Moravia.

Check out her progress here:


This is such a cool site! At the click of a mouse you can bring up all sorts of useless interesting information on the progress of my (and others’ ) wines on their way from Europe to America, and which will then be distributed to warehouses and eventually find their way into restaurants and winestores all over the West Coast of the USA. Amazing!

Villarejo Vineyard

Meanwhile, back at the ranch, about 450 km from the nearest coastline, in the middle of the Iberian Peninsula, here’s a photo (below) of the vineyard in Villarejo (where the Malvar grapes are from) that I took the other day. A grey and cloudy day, raining on and off. See the grass just starting to grow, see the really old vines (>100 yrs) with really deep roots, so that the surface grass with tiny short roots doesn’t compete for the scarce water, but instead provides biodiversity for insects and micro-life. :)



A grey day in Villarejo



A grey day in Carabaña too

Pruning season

Have started pruning, and am off to a good start. I've finished half of Carabaña already, and when I finish there, I'll start on Villarejo.

Focus, focus, focus (on natural wine and other things)

I haven’t been able to post as regularly as I would have liked to recently (over the last few months) for a number of reasons:

Basically I’ve been overwhelmed by events and tasks! Not that I’m complaining. Better to be overwhelmed than to be bored and have to watch TV like I hear normal citizens do!

But now, at last, I’ve managed to do some of the essential tasks that I had to do and am attempting to clear my diary of events, tastings, meetings, distractions, etc so that I can focus, focus, focus on ... looking for a slightly bigger bodega/shed/garage/building/castle/ whatever!

My Master Plan for this year (and the coming years) is to slowly but surely increase both the quantity of wine that I make, and also increase the range of different wines that I make. My ultimate goal is to reach that magical point (tipping point, break-even point, threshold, whatever it’s called) of economic feasibility so that I can leave the day-job I currently have to do, and dedicate myself 100% to grape-growing and wine-making. Having covered the backs of many envelopes with numbers over the years (and quite a few paper tablecloths too) it all boils down to increasing my production to about 50,000 bottles. Which may sound like a lot, but which is in fact considered to be ridiculously tiny in the wine world.

The minor challenge is the physical implementation, ie finding the financing, the building, the machinery, the vineyards, the grapes, etc! That's part is easy, and I’m already on track with all that! The major challenge for me, is how to maintain the artisan quality that I have now, both in the vineyards and in the bodega, as I slowly increase my production. For example, the 2 hectares of vines I have now, I can manage personally and I actually tend each individual vine several times a year; but what happens if I have 4 or 5 ha or even 10 ha one day? Will I be able to care for each vine in the same way?

And in the bodega, dealing with 5,000 litres of wine manually is fine, but what happens when I have to deal with 10,000, then 20,000, and eventually 50,000 litres? I reckon I will have to mechanize certain tasks to a certain extent, but I’m going to be very careful with the use of machinery, especially pumps. Ideally, it would be ideal to just use gravity for moving wine around, but not many bodegas/buildings are designed with that purpose in mind. I think that even the smallest of motor-driven pumps move the wine far too fast and aggressively, and I’m sure the wine gets damaged or altered in some way.

The pump I use at the moment is the tiniest I could find on the market. It cost me €17 in a hardware store and it fits onto the bit of a power drill!

Drill pump

But even this tiny pump can move 2,000 litres of liquid per hour!!! That means I could pump my entire production of wine from one tank to another in 2 hours!! Why do I need to do that when I have all year to move my wine slowly and carefully?

So I’m thinking of buying this pump:

Ye olde pumpe

This pump is over 100 years old (manufactured in the town of Alcoy (Valencia) in 1889), and it still works! A few weeks ago we (the current owner and I) performed a functional test, ie we fitted two hoses to the pump, filled a basin with water, and placed an empty basin at the end of a hose, turned the wheel, and lo and behold, did it not pump all the water out of one basin and into the other!

Am I a Luddute? Or a neo-luddite or whatever it’s called these days? Am I anti-technology? NO, I’m not!!! I have two mobiles, a laptop, a car, and I regularly make use of hi-tech items like elevators, airplanes, and am looking forward to using spacecraft, transporter beams, Culture terminals, cryogenic brain storage, etc as soon as they become available! I believe that technology represents a set of tools to be used as appropriately and as usefully as possible; and I don’t believe that we should be in thrall to technology and just use the latest gizmo available, just because it’s available and somehow deemed ‘better’! A bit of forethought never did anyone any harm, and everyone’s needs and circumstances are different, so why not, in my case, resort to 18th century technology instead of 20th century technology?

Another advantage that this machine has over its more modern counterparts is that its quiet, ie it doesn’t make any noise at all, except for a gentle, soothing whirring sound as the drive-wheels spin. I’ve always hated the horrendous noise made by electric pumps, even the tiny power-drill-driven one I’ve been using. Apart from making me angry and upset, who’s to say that those sound waves don’t affect the wine? Sound waves are used to shatter kidney stones, aren’t they?

Fraud and Lies Continue in the Anti-Natural Wine Community

The "Anti-Natural Wine Movement", via its foremost champion Tom Wark, continues to perpetrate fraud and lies, in yet another natural-wine-bashing post: natural-wine-bashing post:

- by denying that adjectives in the English language can have more than one meaning, when it is evident to all English-speakers that that is plainly not the way the English language works.

          · Merriam-Websters's provides no less than 15 different meanings of the word 'natural'

          · The FDA also has the following to say about the use of the word ‘natural’

          · And the Oxford English Dictionary (1991 version) gives as part of meaning 7a of 'natural':

“manufactured using only simple or minimal processes; ”

- by insisting on the existence of a fictitious "Natural Wine Movement", complete with leaders, dogmas, beliefs and a secret agenda

- by making sweeping generalizations and taking certain individuals' words and phases out of context, misinterpreting them, and attributing them to said fictitious 'natural wine movement'. For example:

• stating that the fictitious 'natural wine movement' believes that natural wine is a new and trendy invention, when everyone knows that wine has been made like that for 8000 years;
• stating that the fictitious 'natural wine movement' simplistically believes that the wine world is divided into 'natural wines' vs 'industrial' wines, when everyone knows that it's much more complex than that and that there is a huge and intricate scale of naturalness;
• stating that the fictitious 'natural wine movement' believes that natural wines are better than all other wines, when everyone knows that there are good natural wines and bad natural wines, just like in any other categorization of wines one cares to devise;

- by refusing to provide evidence that the individuals that are misquoted out of context are actually spokespersons for this fictitious movement and have the authority to speak in the name of thousands of other producers, traders, purveyors and consumers.

  

- by focusing 'criticisms' away from important and relevant issues, such as natural wine's beneficial impact on the environment, its expression of terroir, honesty in labelling, bringing diversity and choice to the consumer, or just simply the pleasure and joy brought into the world by producing and enjoying beautiful and interesting wines, to name but a few.

  

- by stooping to personal insults. For example, here.

  

- by implying that this fictional 'natural wine movement' is an exclusive, holier-than-thou, elitist club, that wants to occupy the moral high ground, and that it rejects anyone who has not actually opted in, and other such delirious fantasies.

Blogger Wark’s latest post is of course part of an ongoing, well-orchestrated conspiracy, organized by the Anti-Natural Wine Movement, which represents about 99.9% of wines produced across the globe, its primary aim being to discredit the producers, traders, purveyors and consumers of natural wine, who represent about 0.01% of wines produced across the globe.

The vast and well-funded Anti-Natural Wine Movement also aims to make everyone adopt a new version of the English language, whereby each word has one and only one meaning, a bit like Newspeak in George Orwell’s “1984”.

Small artisan natural winemakers are effectively without resources, lobby groups, marketing budgets and readership, but we are hoping to ally ourselves with the Natural Gas producers of the world, who have the capability of defending themselves more effectively than us.

Clearly, according to the criteria of the Anti-Natural Wine Movement, natural gas producers are also lying and perpetrating fraud on millions of their customers all over the world by deliberately calling their gas 'natural' while at the same time admitting that it is man-made, and that it requires incredibly expensive, hi-tech machinery and processes to produce. It will be interesting to see if any personal insults are forthcoming from the champions and mouthpieces of the Anti-Natural Wine Movement, directed towards producers or proponents of natural gas, as they certainly have the resources to invest in good lawyers to respond to any possible slanderous insults!

Other possible future partners, in the defence of the English language, and of our right to produce, distribute, purvey and enjoy our wares, free from linguistic hectoring and vinous denigration, are the following:

- Natural cheese puff producers:

- Natural marshmallow producers:

- Natural jelly bean producers:

- Natural sausage producers:

- Natural yogurt producers:

- Natural beer producers:

- Natural butter producers:

- Natural bread producers:

all of whom are producers of man-made products and who therefore are also guilty of deliberately perpetrating fraud and telling lies to their customers!

  

We are also hoping to count on the support of academia, especially from those men and women involved in:

- Natural law
- Natural history

- Natural medicine

- Natural philosophy

- Natural science

all of which are clearly man-made abstract concepts, which make use of many man-made artifacts. These professors and scholars have evidently been deliberately perpetrating fraud and lying to their students for even longer than producers of actual physical products.

What else is on the secret agenda of the anti-natural wine movement? I don't know yet - that depends on my imagination, er, oops, I mean, it depends on the reliable information I receive from reputable sources close to the leadership of the Anti-Natural Wine Movement, only to be published after carefully checking that information in a process of due diligence. Yes.

Cheers, m'dears, lets go enjoy some wine :)

Orange Wine

There seems to be a lot nonsense being written about orange wines lately, including by writers/bloggers who should know better. I'm not going to name any names, because there's no need to, ie if you're reading this post then you're a wine-geek and you'll have read all the other recent posts on orange wine and you'll know exactly who and what I'm talking about.

An orange wine

 
It seems to me that the fundamental error that many people are making is not realizing that orange wines are a catagory unto themselves, and should not really be compared to white wines, red wines or any other kind of wine. Like Sherry, for example. Sherry is technically a white wine, but who in their right mind would taste a sherry and compare it to a normal white wine? I believe the same applies to orange wines.

There also seems to be some confusion about the use of sulfites in orange wines. There's obviously no connection whatsoever. Orange wines can be made with no sulfites, with a reasonable quantity of sulfites, or with lots of sulfites! It depends on the winemakers' decision.

And there also seems to be some confusion with regard to natural/organic/biodynamic wines. Orange wines do not necessarily have to be natural, organic or biodynamic. There is in fact an industrial volume-producer in Spain who still churns out an orange wine for about €2/bottle.

Orange wines are not a newly discovered phenomenon. They've been made that way for thousands of years, especially in countries like Georgia and Armenia, but probably in ALL winemaking countries. Friuli, in Italy, for example. I know for a fact that they were made in Spain, until they went out of fashion; now there are only a few producers left. OK, so they're all the rage at the moment, and everyone who wants to be relevant and interesting feels obliged to write about them! Oh well.

Orange wines are perfectly capable of expressing the terroir of where they were produced. Why on earth should they not be? It depends on the winemakers' decisions, just like for any wine or type of wine.

I don't see why certain writers think that ALL orange wines are expensive. Obviously some are, but others are quite normally priced. (my own, for example, retail in NY for about $20 in winestores and for about $40 in restaurants)

Orange wines don't have to be made in clay amphoras. They can be made in any container whatsoever. I personally make the exact same orange wine in containers of three different materials (clay amphoras, stainless steel, and open-top oak casks) just to see if there's any appreciable difference.

What I don't understand is why people get so upset and feel they have mock and/or attempt to be funny and/or criticise without knowing what they're talking about. I mean, surely it's interesting for people to try a new type of wine? Why all this negativity and disparagement? Why not focus on the interesting, reasonably-priced, terroir-expressing orange wines out there, instead of on the expensive, funky, cloudy ones?

Orange wines don't have to be cloudy. It depends on whether the winemaker fines it and/or filters it and/or lets it settle naturally by gravity!

Orange wines don't have to be oxidized either. It depends on whether the winemaker decides to protect it from contact with oxygen or not.

I personally discovered orange wines about three years ago quite by accident, and I have to say that I love them, because they are so different from white wines and red wines. They are very versatile too: on the one hand they're great for drinking on their own as an aperitivo before lunch, or for quaffing casually in a winebar, and on the other hand they go great with food too.

Here's a nice photo of my orange wine, which in this case was made in an clay amphora, was not fined or filtered, does not contain any added sulfites; but it could just as easily have been made in stainless steel, been filtered and fined and contain lots of sulfites, and it would still be an orange wine!



foto

Geeky natural wine shipment news

I just received an email from what I thought was a spammer with an address like "no-reply@whatever.dot.com", and which I usually delete on sight, but for some reason or other, on this occasion I decided to open it up; and hey, what-do-you-know, it was actually something interesting!!! It was from the shipping company that's carrying 2 pallets of my wine to the USA!

Well, my pallets are on the good ship Maersk Malacca, inside a 40' Reefer container (along with other pallets of wine from various artisan producers from all over Spain) bound for JosePastorSelections' warehouse in New York.

The Good Ship Maersk Malacca
(photo by Manuel Hernández Lafuente)

She set sail from Barcelona 2 days ago on 5th February. Yesterday she called in to Valencia, and right now as I type, she's en route to Tangiers (Morocco), where she should dock tomorrow morning, 8th Feb. She should set sail again on the same day, bearing due West across the Atlantic (all communications channels open, phasers on stun) and is due to arrive in New York on Sunday the 17th Feb. There she will unload my pallets, and then head on south to Portsmouth and Savannah.

For a real-time map with position of the ship, check out this web-page. It's so cool! Apart from showing the current location of the ship, at the click of a mouse, you can bring up all sorts of really useless interesting information :)

For some photos of the good ship Maersk Malacca herself, click on this link. One of the photos is a bit worrying, as those containers seem to be stacked up on deck pretty high! Surely it can't cross the Atlantic like that?!!!

Pretty geeky stuff, no?

PS. And here's another link to an article on the Maersk Malacca. It seems that shipping line, Diana Shipping Services, S.A., has just been awarded a "Maritime Labour Certificate" for the working conditions aboard. The crew (not sure if motley or not) are rejoicing to learn that the cap'n has banned keel-hauling altogether and has cut back on the use of the cat o' nine tails! But the normal floggings will continue until morale improves!!!

Wines of 2012 – A Tank Tasting (or Progress Report)

This seems a good moment to post a progress report on all my wines and experiments from 2012, because it’s the deepest, darkest coldest point of the year here in central Spain, so the wines have already progressed and developed and evolved a bit, and they’re already showing an indication of how they’re going to proceed.

I’m writing this while touching wood because it would be just typical if I were to say that they’re all coming along fine, and then two days later something awful would happen!

But the fact is, that all the wines are doing just fine (more or less!):

1.Airén. This is a wine I make every year, and can be drunk very young. In fact, I started bottling it in December and have been distributing it locally here in Madrid already. At this stage in its life cycle it’s very fruity both in the nose and in the mouth. It’s nothing like any other 100% Airén you may find on sale (generally wishy-washy, insipid, and inoffensive), as this wine actually has a good body, and intense aromas and tastes. As time goes by, it loses it fruity, flowery characteristics, and becomes quite dry and sherry-like. By June/July it is in fact totally sherry-like. Some years, it’s sparkling for the first few months, but this year it’s not.

2.Tempranillo. This is another wine that I make every year. This year, due to the drought and to the rabbits, I only harvested enough grapes to make one (1) barrel of Crianza! At the time of writing (Jan 13) it’s still in the stainless steel fermentation tank, and I racked it once, a few days after pressing, back in October. I’ll move it into an old barrel as soon as I have time, maybe in February, where it will sit for about a year or so, depending on how old the barrel was, and on tastings,

3.Malvar No.1. I made one lot of Malvar (from 100-yr old vines from Villarejo) by straight carbonic maceration. Clusters destemmed and sealed in a stainless steel tank for 15 days. Then crushed and pressed, and left alone to finish fermentation. Tasting good, maybe to be released in March.

4.Malvar No.2. The second lot of Malvar (from the same vineyard) I made with about 30 days skin contact. This is the so-called “orange” wine. Tasting good. I don’t know whether to release or not, because I think it might even get better over time. Have to think. And taste.

5.Malvar. No.3. The third lot of Malvar (still from the same vineyard) I made in old clay amphoras (or ‘tinajas’ as they’re called in Spain) (or ‘qvevri’ as they’re called in Georgia). Back in September, I crushed the grapes and poured everything into the amphorae. I punched down the cap for a week or two, until it stopped rising, and haven’t touched them since then! I scoop out a sample every now and then from the top of the amphora, to check it. Beautiful! (touch wood). Tasting good. This lot I’m definitely going to let sit there for at least six months, maybe even longer, on all the skins and pips, which have already sunk to the bottom.

6.Malvar No.4. The same as the amphora above, but in an old open top oak barrel. I have no idea what to do with this lot! So I guess I’ll just leave it alone, keep tasting it, have tasters taste it, and decide some other time!

7.Garnacha No.1. This is a lot of Garnacha from the Sierra de Gredos (specifically from the village of Sotillo de la Adrada). I’m totally amazed by this wine, and I’m kicking myself for not taking proper notes, because I’d like to make more of it next year, but I fear I can’t remember exactly what/how/when I did what I did! This Garnacha is total drinkable now! I think it would be a loss if I were to try and age it or blend it or whatever. I need to have some more tasters taste it and get feedback from them, but my heart/intuition (and feedback received to date) tells me that this has to be a young wine and it has to be drunk now.

8.Garnachas Nos.2 and 3. These are other lots of Garnachas from Gredos, one from Sotillo de la Adrada, and one from Méntrida. These are all still evolving, and are not very nice to drink young at the moment, unlike Lot No.1. Again I need to have some tasters taste them, but I think these will be good for blending and/or aging. It’s early days though, and they’ll continue to evolve over spring.

9.Garnachas Nos.4 and 5. Same as above (Nos.2 & 3), but with a spontaneous ‘velo de flor’!

10.Rojilla experiment. I’ve only got 1 ‘arroba’ of this strange, uncommon, unknown grape variety. It’s in a glass demijohn and I haven’t tasted it since last October, so I’ve no idea how it’s turned out.

And that, I’m afraid to say, is that!

I was expecting to do a lot more in 2012, but the rabbits, the weather, and the Spanish bureaucrats prevented me from achieving my goals. But not to worry. This year I shall try again. Basically, I hope to find a bigger winery/shed/place in which to make more wines. That’s not much to ask for, is it?