Archive for the ‘Review spanish wine’ Category

Once upon a time there was Rioja. This was a region in Spain known for long-lived, muscular, spicy red wines. The wines were made from the Tempranillo grape, and they were sold and enjoyed all over Europe.  As far as the wine world was concerned, Rioja WAS Spanish wine.

Enter Vega Sicilia. I know this sounds like a Spanish guy with dark wavy hair and a skinny mustache, but this is also a wine. In the year 1864 it surprised the civilized world by being every bit as good as a Rioja, but not from Rioja.

Vega Sicilia came instead from a region on Spain’s northern plateau called Ribera del Duero, where the summers were hot and dry and the winters were hard and long. The extreme temperatures created good acid, tannins and phenolics in the grapes, resulting in complex and well-structured wines. Vega Sicilia’s wines became a hot item in the wine world, and started a rush to create more great wines near the Duero River.

Next to come along is Emilio Moro, who really is a Spanish guy (but I don’t know if he was dark and mustache’d). Read the rest of this entry »

I’ll admit my prejudice right off the bat. I like Spanish reds. A lot.

For the combination of value and quality, it doesn’t get any better than the wines of Spain. But this wasn’t always so. Twenty years ago the country produced lots of wine, but most of it was simple and rustic. The technology was old-fashioned and many of the country’s vineyards had fallen into disrepair. But a man named Jorge Ordonez recognized the huge untapped potential in all the wonderful Old Vine vineyards in Spain, and set about re-creating the Spanish wine industry. He became a negociant like Georges duBoeuf in France, selecting vineyard sources and bottling many of them under his auspices. Today, he imports into the U.S. over 130 wines from 40 wineries. And I’ve yet to taste a bad wine in his portfolio. Robert Parker, Jr. has recognized  his work by naming him (twice) “Wine Personality of the Year.” And he single-handedly changed American wine drinkers’ perception of Spanish wine, introducing world-class wines from previously unknown regions such as Jumilla, Priorat, and Campo de Borja.

The wine I’m talking about today, Bodegas Borsao Red Wine 2008, is from the Campo de Borja Read the rest of this entry »