Viticultura y Enología. Siglo XXI

“All virtue is summed up in dealing justly” Aristotle

Hello folks,

Lately I am making some trips to Ribera del Duero, since I am going to take care of the technical area of a small winery in Villatuelda; Peter Sisseck and Vega Sicilia be aware!

So far I am getting used  to the Ribera wines that are so similar and at the same time so different from those of La Rioja; and mainly to the area that I have covered a couple of times.

Here you can see a photo of the entrance of one of the most prestigious wineries in La Ribera: Bodegas Protos with the Castle of Peñafiel in the background, which I tried to visit but due to my lack of time I couldn’t.  I have pending a visit to the premises, since they told me it’s worth it. By the way, I bought some bottles of Protos Verdejo 2009 to taste something different and sincerely it isn’t bad but I have tasted many better Ruedas.

What can I say about La Ribera … the landscape is completely different from La Rioja; they surely have bigger land plots, there is one in Pagos del Rey where you drive pass in your car and it seems endless. You can see many more cereal plots inserted reason why they are not monoculture as we can be in La Rioja.

Actually I wish to start going to the vineyards to select the best plots and harvest them separately, working straight where I like it most; that is in the vineyard.

I enclose a curious photo, where you can appreciated the more than considerable height of the formation wire, it’s probably  1.20 m and with vegetation covers, it has a drip irrigation system  since surely it will be necessary to water it during the summer so it keeps the vegetation the maximum time possible.

Okay then, see you soon. I have a pile of things to explain to you although I need to make a little more of time to write all the experiences that happen and cross the mind of a technician in La Rioja.

“Hope is the dream of a waking man.” Aristóteles.

Hello Folks,

Here we are again after a lazy week without writing in the blog, I really do apologise.

Today I am going to describe one of my most interesting professional challenges. Will I be able to produce a wine, or better two, a Ribera del Duero and also a Rioja, and enter into the TOP 100?

What I am sure of is that we will do all the possible for it to be; therefore I am going to describe some of the steps that I have in mind.

1. Selecting the best land plot, about 2000 ha. in Rioja and 100 ha in Ribera del Duero. With the invaluable aid of the G. I. S.

2. Harvest in cases not over 25kg. and harvesting only the grapes that are in perfect conditions, the objective is to transport in less than one hour the grapes to the winery so they cannot evolve losing then aromas.

3. In the winery the grapes are lightly de-stalked and go to fermentation, leaving nature to do the rest, meaning, transforming the sugars into alcohol and freeing the wine’s aromatic compounds, as much the fermentative as the varietals.

4. The best casks will be selected according to origin, type of toast or supplier so they can do the malolatic fermentation and the subsequent  ageing.

5. Finally, we select a cork with two mirrored heads and then to bottling, where we leave all our dreams locked in a bottle.

All the described above doesn’t worry me a lot, what really distresses me is thinking that to reach and obtain a TOP WINE there is more, not at a technical level but at a commercial level, as if you had to pay the journalist with favours to obtain good reviews and points.

However, I do trust in the well doing  of people, also the first thing we have to do is obtain a wine of 100 points and afterwards see if we get those points but what we are sure of is that we have done a good job.

See you later folks.

“The joy to see and to understand is the most perfect gift of nature” Albert Einstein.

Dear folks,

Today I am going to tell you a little of the history of the Denominación de Origen Calificada Rioja.

The other day after dessert we finished with a Monte Real Gran Reserva 1978 (Bodegas Riojanas).

A surprising wine that after 32 years was in perfect conditions for its consumption. It was not as evolved as it could seem. With an intense tile colour, emphasizing in powerful aromas on the nose with a harmonious blend of ageing in oak and leathers mainly, not cherry-like aromas like other wines that I have tried, and an easy mouth pass with smooth tannins.

But the reason why I am writing this post is not to praise the high quality of this wine but to describe a little the history of La Rioja.

As you can see in the back label  appears the year Cosecha 1978, it seems normal to you that the vintage year is on, but it isn’t , since it wasn’t until 1980 when the vintage controls were restored in the Denomination.

This was because for the Bodegas Riojanas Centenary in 1990, they decided to prepare a special wine Viña Albina and Monte Real of 1978. Notifying the Regulators Council to come to certify when the wine was put into the barrels, when it was racked and bottled; moment then when they were kept locked in the winery’s cemetery until the bodega’s centenary in 1990.

When it was time to label and after the Regulators Council rigorous control, it was authorized to seal it with the vintage year 1978, numbering the bottles instead of putting the behing label of previous harvests.

Reason why you already know that really the first year in which the Regulator Council certified a vintage year was in 1978 instead of 1980.

I hope you found this piece of history interesting.

“Beware of the person of one book.” Saint Thomas de Aquinas.

Hello dear friends,

As you all well appreciate, spring has arrives, therefore the habit of having a vermouth from the German wermut “ajenjo” is back.

The reason of this post is to let you know that in Spain we also produce very good vermouths such as: Martinez Lacuesta (Haro), Pascali (Cenicero), Yzaguirre, Vermuts Miró…

According to Wikipedia, the vermouth was invented by Hippocrates a well known doctor of the ancient times. He soaked Artemisia flowers and dictums leaves in wine and he obtain what in the Middle Ages was called “Hippocrates wine” or simply “herbs wine”.

Since the end of the 18^Th century with the arrival of new technology, the aromatised wine entered a new productivity dimension, where the experience of the Piedmonts pioneers excelled, but it was from the 19^th mid century when the Luigi and Giuseppe Cora brothers´, founders of the very well known brand “Martini”, the preparation of the vermouth acquired a industrial nature.

With the pass of time, the word also acquired a generic meaning to define aperitif – any drink with tapas- before lunch.

A very local synonym “Tiroles” is known as Vermouth in the area of Cenicero-Haro (Rioja Alta).

The vermouths I like the most are Pascali and Martinez Lacuesta Reserva, they are infinitely more complex so much in aroma as in the mouth compared with the other more commercial ones like Martini, Cinzano o Campari.

On the other Spanish ones I cannot comment since I haven’t tried them.

Anyway gentleman, you know it is not only Martini, there are other wineries that are doing  things well.

“The truth may be more than the reason” Sophocles (495 b.c. – 406 b.c.)

Dear readers,

Today I am going to speak about a topic, that everybody is talking now,  the Wine Future meeting is going to be a turning point about the wine critic world or people who write about wine. Viva the Democracy and especially the power of the people.

Several years ago wineries were afraid of wine critics as: Peñin, Isabel Mijares, Robert Parker, Jancis Robinson, Oz Clarke, Tim,…  people that had the power to destroy you or the opposite to make your sales  greater. In a trip in the Toro Region (Zamora, Spain) one guy told me a story, one day an owner of  a winery of Toro received a call of a Danish importer saying that if he still had wine in his winery, he thought that it was a tiny question because there was wine in his winery.

The importer said to him that he buy all the bottles, because he had tasted and liked it very much. Finally they reach an agreement with the price for every bottle, after the importer paid in the same day. A couple of days later the owner of  winery of Toro received a call from a friend to congratulate him, because one of his wines was pointed with ninety something points by Robert Parker. The owner was very happy, but I believe that the Danish importer, who was handling privileged information, was happier than the owner because he had made a good business.

This is only an example of how one critic can have so much power to destroy or to make your sales greater.

These times have changed I believe that now the power is for the people in social networks like faceook, different blogs, twitter, …. We had read about it in some blogs as laotrabotella or Dr. Vino where people write about wines. A clear example of this is Cork’d where the people are speaking about the wines which they had tasted. If the majority of the people says that a wine is quite good, it will be because it is really good and not because probably only one person says it.

I believe that it can be like in the hotels, where now any person who goes away to a hotel looks at the comments to see what the people think about it if they say that it is Ok or not.

Welcome to the democracy!

A post that I consider that already it is like a science fiction is the one post that was published in Dr. Vino, it is about the new application for the mobile Google’s wine goggles.

Hugs

” From the sublime to the ridiculous is only one step “.

Napoleon Bonaparte (1769-1821).

There is a Spanish saying “If you want the vine strong prune it with leaf” , the people of Cenicero said it to me twice, and I was trying to look for a reason why our elders were saying it.

Everybody knows that once the harvest has finished, and before the leaf fall all the Carbohydrate Reserves that could remain stored in the leaves and in the shoots, are going down slowly towards the root to use as nutrients for the following year to bud with more force, due to the fact that they have to use these reserves until the new leaves are active photo synthetically with a positive balance meaning they generate more energy across the photosynthesis than they consume.

I have not found bibliographical references on this topic; but I am sure that if we have a vineyard in a poor soil that needs to optimize all the resources of nutrients to bud on the following year, in the first year surely we will not notice anything but I am sure that this vineyard will age worse than that vineyard which we prune as soon as all the leaves have fallen and it stores all the Carbohydrate as starch.

I am very surprised that the old men are confused, I believe it is that we are confused with the Spanish saying, or maybe some people. When the word is “prune”, it does not refer to the current moment winter pruning, it is summer pruning or shoot thinning. Due to the elimination of these water shoots we are removing shoots that are often not fruitful,not only that but the operation of pruning is going to be easier in the future.

Finally I hope that this has helped you understand a bit more about the topic of the popular Spanish saying.

At the same time because I like to write my blogs I have decided to create a blog with my own domain www.puntovino.es/en/ I hope that it will be finish soon.

Have a good weekend.

Welcome to my blog, this site has been created because I am a very eager and I love the wine culture.

I hope that you like it and find it interesting.