Natural Wine fair in Madrid (and other ramblings)

Yes, incredible but true!  There's going to be a mini-natural wine fair held in Madrid this coming Sunday 10th May 2015. I say 'incredible' because it's been many years, if not decades, that natural wines have been produced, sold and drunk around the world, but the phenomenon seems to have passed Spain by. But mustn't complain! It's going to be a great event, and great fun shall be had by all :)

Save the date and the place, which is very conveniently very central and right next to Atocha train station:

Here's the list of the producers:

– Alexandre Coulange – Domaine Thuronis – Languedoc
– Jacques Broustet – Chateau Lamery – Burdeos
– Nacho González – La Perdida – Valdeorras
– Bárbara Magugliani y Joan Carles Torres – Can Torres – Ampurdán
– Manel Rodríguez – Wiss – Montsant
– Marcel Carrera y Ramón Viña – Vinya Ferrer – Terra Alta
– Miguel J. Márquez – Dagón – Valencia
– Rafa López – Sexto Elemento – Valencia
– Fabio Bartolomei – Ambiz – Madrid
– Julián Ruiz – Esencia Rural – Toledo
– Samuel Cano – Patio – Cuenca
– Juan Pascual López – Viña Enebro – Murcia
– Jose Miguel Márquez – Marenas – Montilla
– Ramón Saavedra – Cauzón – Granada
– Torcuato Huertas – Purulio – Granada
– Manuel y Lorenzo Valenzuela – Barranco Oscuro – Granada

And you'll be able to taste the wines of:

– Domaine Meyer – Alsacia
– Patrick Bouju – Auvernia
– Costadilá – Veneto
– Frank Cornelissen – Sicilia

Only €5 to get in, and you get to keep the glass! A bargain at twice the price :)

Other Ramblings

Well, I've been incredibly busy lately and amongst other things I managed to plant about 200 new Tempranillo vines in the Carabaña vineyard in the empty spaces where the vines were missing for some reason or other.

Here's a panoramic view of the vineyard from a few days ago. Note the grass just starting to grow, and the tubes protecting the newly planted vines:

Panoramic view of Carabaña vineyard

 And here's a view from the top! See the cane for the young vine to grasp onto, and you can just see the tiny vine at the bottom:

Bird's eye view!

I also managed to hoe up around about 30 vines or so, before my back said 'enough'!

Hi hoe, hi hoe, it's off to work I go!

Meanwhile, back at the bodega, I finally got round to bringing a barrica of Tempranillo 2010 from the previous bodega I was working out of, in Morata de Tajuña, two years ago(!) to my current bodega in El Tiemblo.

Due to the fact that a full barrica weighs about 275 kg, and in a not very accessible position, what I had to do was: pump the wine out of the barrica into a steel tank in the back of a van, load the empty barrica, drive to El Tiemblo, and then pump the wine back into the unloaded and palletized barrica:

Pumping Tempranillo back into its barrica

I also finally got round to tidying up the patio of the bodega a little bit. Here you can see the space next to the wall that used to be covered with brambles, which I had left alone on purpose last year, in the hope of harvesting some brambles! But there were hardly any to be had, so I uprooted the lot. Pending for May is the planting of some roses or other climbing plants that will help prettify that enormous blank wall!

Here below you can just make out the tiny plants of lettuce, tomato, onions, etc:

 And the latest addition to the garden is some basil. The large-leaved Italian variety. I actually have lots more plants to plant, in fact I intend to cover that whole row, in order to make jars and jars of pesto :)

The main thing that I managed to do though was to bottle up all my 2014 vintage wines (Airén, Doré, Albillo, Sauvignon Blanc, Garnacha, Tempranillo), and free up all my fermentation vessels, and so I can relax over the summer knowing that all I need to do is wash them before use!

Here's where I store all my wines these days - in niches under the concrete fermentation tanks:

The Albillo niche

And lastly, yet another pending item on my "to do" list - this is the future lovely pergola, that will be covered in vines and hanging fruit, providing a shady decadent luxurious space for slothing around in easy-chairs and/or hammocks while sipping wine and nibbling on aperitivos! Alas, it won't be ready for at least another year:

The future decadent wine-tasting area

And really lastly, I was in a place in Madrid the other day where they had an interesting selection of extraterrestrial wines:

"Importados de otros mundos" = "Imported from other worlds"

How on earth did I manage to achieve all that?

It's been a long time since my last post, and such a lot has lot has happened; so much in fact that I haven't had any time to write any posts on this blog!

That's probably a good thing though, all things considered, as after all, my 'core activities' (as it were) are growing grapes, making wine, and marketing and selling said wine; not writing a blog.  On the other hand though, one could consider writing this blog as part of my marketing!  I suppose it is, really, even though I like doing it just for its own sake.

There's a lot of information in this blog (especially in the "Pages" above), and I get a lot of good feedback about it from many different sources; so I guess I must be doing something right.

So like I said, I've been busy, busy, busy. But in a good sense, not all stressed out and running around madly constantly doing stuff. Like last year!

So here's a quick summary of what I've managed to achieve recently:

1. The pruning. Incredibly I'm on schedule! Usually, if I remember rightly, I'm always running late, some years really, really late, and other years just late! But this year is perfect, so far (touching wood here!). Carabaña (field blend of Airén and Tempranillo) is done; Villarejo (Malvar) is done; my low altitude Garnacha plot in El Tiemblo (Sierra de Gredos) is just under half done, and my high altitude Garnacha plot (also El Tiemblo) is the last one to be started on, in a few weeks.

My half-pruned low-altitude Garnacha vineyard (El Tiemblo, Sierra de Gredos)

2. Bottling. Again, much better than last year, when I had to bottle up madly during the summer to free up tanks before the harvest. This year, I'm about half done already. I just have to bottle up the Airén 14, Doré 14,  Albillo 14 (from an amphora which will be very time-consuming), the Sauv blanc 14 (ditto), and just 1 more barrica of Garnacha.

Bottling up

3. I started beautifying the patio, and preparing a plot of ground to plant some vegetables in.

My rather messy looking patio at the bodega

4. I bought 200 vines to plant in the empty spaces in my Carabaña vineyard (Tempranillo variety, grafted onto Paulsen 1103 rootstock) which I hope to do in April, depending on the temperature and weather

5. I managed to source and buy 2 kg of organic beeswax, so I can line that new baby amphora that I bought on the spur of the moment a few months ago!

6. I prepared and delivered several nice orders (Thierry Puzelat (France), Restaurante Montía (El Escorial), Restaurante Los Asturianos (Madrid), Le Petit Bistrot (Madrid), CienPorCien Natural (Cádiz), Restaurante Bodeguita de Pilar (El Tiemblo), a CSA type group in the mountain village of Bustarviejo)

Boxes, having been prepared, ready to receive bottles of wine, having been corked and labeled

7. Sent off samples to people who were interested in tasting my wines: Barcelona, Vienna, London, Avila, Grenada, Madrid (being discrete here, no names!)

8. Organized some tastings in my bodega with possible importers/buyers (Australia, Norway, Barcelona) and with other people (not possible buyers) who just came to taste because they wanted to (Japan, Boston, Portugal/Belgium, Madrid) (being discrete again here, no names!)

Doing a bit of tasting in the bodega

9. Did a presentation/tasting of my wines in the Petit Bistrot (Madrid) (see this previous post)

10. Went to a Slow Food / Slow Wine event in Zaragoza, to pour my wines, and managed to find a distributor for Aragón, one Carlos Scholderle, #winelover ambassador to Spain. (This two-day event deserves a whole post to itself!)

My table at the Slow Wine tasting, Zaragoza (Aragón)

11. And am in the process of calmly updating the paperwork/redtape/bureaucracy that has to be done if you want to have a legal wine business. Instead of madly doing it the day before the deadlines!

12. And all the while working at my day-job!

 Not bad, eh?  Another new year's resolution was to write down all the things I manage to achieve, which I've been doing. This makes you feel good about your life! Before, I just had the to-do list, which is of course never-ending, but it seemed that I wasn't achieving anything. In fact I was, but I just didn't realize it!!!

Anyway, I hope that wasn't too boring to read through. But it just goes to show that winemaking is not just about being mystical in the vineyard and getting to taste some really interesting wines at tastings! Though of course I love those occasions too, when they occur! There's lots and lots of rather mundane stuff that has to be done, but which is not really photogenic or interesting to write about!

So I think I'll just post this now, without any further ado, and maybe get round to writing some more specific posts next week (or at least before the end of March!)

PS. Just to say that I'll be off to Paris, France this weekend: see here. It's a tasting organized by Thierry Puzelat of all his 'natural wine' producers that he imports into France.

PPS. And also just to say that on Friday 13th, I'll be presenting my wines at Enoteca Barolo (Madrid). 

Some Thoughts and Comments and Feedback on my Recent Natural Wine Tasting

I got a lot of good feedback from the people who came to the tasting of my new wines the other night at the Petit Bistrot. There were not many of us there which was a good thing as I could circulate and chat to the different groups, who didn't really know each other.

It was quite an informal affair as far as tastings go. The normal procedure seems to be to set up a sort of 'high table' or stage with the speaker speaking at an audience who are all sitting facing him or her. But in this case we were all just standing around in groups in a restaurant which, being a weekday, was empty apart from ourselves.

I came away with a very positive feeling of satisfaction and of the certainty that I must be doing something right! A feeling that I really needed, given my recent string of acetic disasters (see my previous post).

Here are the wines I presented:

Airén 2014
Doré 2014
Albillo 2014
Sauvignon Blanc 2013
Tempranillo 2013
Garnacha 2013

The first three were very young whites, which are not even bottled up yet. I bottled six bottles of each specially for this tasting straight from the stainless steel fermentation tanks (Airén and Doré) and from the amphora (Albillo). I am very happy with all three, and I think they should be drunk between now and this summer, ie young, while they are nice and fresh, especially the Airén. I know my Airens can last for years and still be drinkable, but they evolve into a different wine, which becomes less and less fruity and more and more Sherry-like as time goes by. Again, there's no accounting for taste, and many people like them that way. It's just that I personally like the Airén while it's young and fruity and full of complexities.

Regarding the Doré, there's not much I can say as it's the first time I've used that variety. So, I will keep back several cases and taste them over the years. At the moment, it's interesting to drink.

The Albillo 2014 is enormous! It's super complex and interesting and intense. It has the body of a big red wine but the aromas of a white! I'm pretty sure it will evolve well over time too, but it's perfectly fine right now too.

The Sauvignon blanc 2013 is an orange wine, ie made with white grapes but macerated on the skins like a red wine - and then racked into an old clay amphora, then bottled and aged.

I have to say that I myself was really surprised and impressed by the reception the wines got; which sounds like a silly thing to say, as I'd obviously tasted them all before. But I'd always tasted them on my own, straight from the tanks, in a silent and empty winery. Whereas at the tasting, it was like being an actor on stage, with all the related nerves and stage-fright!  Especially during the first wine, when everyone is paying close attention to what I'm saying (as opposed to chatting with their mates like they were doing by the sixth wine!)

So, I think I've managed to tick all those natural wine boxes that I'm interested in ticking:

- Express the terroir
- Express the grape variety
- Pleasant and enjoyable to drink
- Comment-worthy
- Complex and interesting aromas and tastes

I won't go into details about the actual aromas and tastes perceived or comments made by all the different people who kindly shared their opinions with me, as they were all different and even conflicting! Never would it be more appropriate to say "There's no accounting for taste"!

In any case, I'd rather let the wines speak for themselves, and I'd also rather let tasters and critics and winelovers in general speak their opinions, instead of me. Just because I can grow grapes and make wine, doesn't mean that I can write critically and usefully about my own wines! Strange as it may seem!

During the course of the evening I had an interesting discussion with a group of people about the visual aspects of my wines, which were all rather cloudy, all had sediments, and one even had some precipitated tartrates. In a nutshell, my opinion about the visual aspect is, as Clark Gable said to Vivien Leigh: "Frankly, my dear, I don’t give a damn!".  Now that's not meant to be rude or disparaging or anything like that, it's simply the reduction or summary of a topic that I've though about for a long time. A more detailed explanation for this attitude is as follows:

1. I believe that the current modern standard of beauty in wine is just a mere casual collateral consequence of industrial large-volume producing wineries' need to stabilize their wines for transport and storage purposes. I don't think that all these wineries independently and simultaneously started thinking about how to make their wines look better; no, they looked for a way to be able to transport and store their wines cheaply and over long distances and for a long time.

2. I don't believe that transparent, shiny, liquids are for some reason intrinsically more pleasing to look at than cloudy, semi-opaque liquids. This is just the prevailing opinion in the spirit of the times in which we happen to be living. The analogy that sprang to mind in the heat of the moment was of nude paintings of the past, where the subjects were fat! The opposite, in fact, of what is held to be beautiful today, ie not an intrinsic, universal quality, but based on other criteria that are held to be valid at the time in question

3. I also believe that wines are primarily best enjoyed for their taste, and secondarily for their aromas (which are of course closely related), while the visual part is in a different league altogether. I mean how much enjoyment can you get from just looking at your glass of wine?  Most winedrinkers don't pay that much attention to it anyway - just a cursory glance I would say. Most winedrinkers don't even smell their wine before drinking it - I'd say that smelling your wine is a rather geeky thing to do.  So actually looking at your wine and analyzing all those points that you read about in "How to drink wine" manuals seems to me to be only for people studying to become professionals, and a completely useless (and maybe even pretentious) exercise for 'normal' winelovers.

I have an info sheet for each one of the wines we tasted, so if anyone is interested, just write me an email or whatever and I'll send it along.  Ideally I should just put them online somewhere and make a link, but I don't know where to upload them to!

For a post in Spanish, written by Vicente Vida, a Spanish wine blogger, who came to the tasting, click here.

Tasting Presentation of Six (6) Natural Wines

PROXIMAMENTE - Cata de Nuevos Vinos de Vinos Ambiz:

COMING SOON - A Tasting of New Wines by Vinos Ambiz

Cuando - El jueves 22 de enero

When - this Thursday 22 of January

A qué hora - a partir de las 20:30

At what time - starting at 20:30

Donde - en el Petit Bistrot, c/Principe de Vergara, 210

Where - at the Petit Bistrot, c/Principe de Vergara, 210, Madrid

Qué vinos:

What wines:

3 blancos/whites 2014 (Airén, Albillo, Doré)
1 naranja/orange 2104 (Sauvignon blanc)
2 tintos/reds 2013 (Garnacha, Tempranillo)

Hay que reservar: 91-426-7405

Booking required: 91-426-7405

Qué más - charla informativa y ronda de preguntas y muchas cosas ricas para cenar

What else - a presentation and question answer session, and lovely food for dinner

Cuanto cuesta - €25

How much - €25