Wine Fictions

To travel often offers you the opportunity to try wines and grapes that otherwise you would never come across. Having recently been in Abruzzo, Italy, I was eager to try grapes besides Montepulciano, Trebbiano or Passerina that you can easily find in Hamburg.  As soon as I got inside the incredibly charming Casa del Caffè in Ortona, my eyes were drawn to the wines of Cantina Tollo and specially to this Maiolica that I want to share with you.  As you can guess, I have never heard of this grape before and, therefore, my curiosity has taken over my buying option and I left the shop with a bottle in my hand (as well as really nice mix of coffees done by the owner who, by the way, has recommended me to have the wine slightly chilled).  When home I quickly put it in the fridge and prepared some nibbles to go along with it. Having read something about it in the meantime, my curiosity grew even bigger. Maiolica was almost extinct and it is now the object of several recovery pro...

Growing up in Portugal in the 90s and early 2000s led me to the establishment of a certain taste profile that way too often ignored the fascinating variety that you have in wines from all over the world. Even though I ended up growing a fan of completely different kinds of aromatic profiles such as Riesling or Sangiovese, there are certain characteristics that directly awake in me a smile of pleasure. One of them is the iron taste, often also described as blood. Whenever I come across a wine which is dominated by such an iron taste, I feel myself surrendering to it and purely enjoying it.  At first I thought this was something exclusively from the Douro region. It did not surprise me that it was also to be found in most Ribera del Duero wines as it is the direct region when you go into Spain and that Tempranillo is Tinta Roriz. Same grape, same soil, all good. But having a wine from Burgenland , Austria, where the soils can be completely different, has opened a new brave world ahea...

One of the hardest questions that I am often confronted at the shop is what is my favourite wine? Or alternative, which kind of wine do I drink? To my vague answers, the only thing I can say is that there is no concrete answer to any of these questions.   Being a rather moody person, it really depends on how I am feeling at a particular moment and, definitely what I am eating. Sometimes I may think too much about it as I want to extract the most of both food and wine as well as I like to explore new taste combinations.  That is why I have chosen this Negra Mole for a tapas evening. Also known as Listán Negro, this Arvad has shown the typical light colour of the grape which resembled Pinot Noir, even though there was some brownish nuances.  As I have first felt in the nose there was a feast of elegant cherries and earthy notes such as graphite which has given it sort of a nebbiolo touch.   Some mediterranean herbs were also to be felt. In the mouth it was ra...

 Two years ago I have written a post about this same wine, same vintage.  As it often happens with some wines when I try them, I am curious to know how they end up developing with time, even though there is always an eminent risk of letting them age for too long till they reach a no return point.  In fact, I have to confess that I was pretty scared before opening this Tellus.  Being a 2020 harvest without any added sulphites it could be that the wine would not be stable enough to last that long. As I have first felt it in the nose I quickly became more relaxed as I have not noticed any fault on it.  On the palate, and comparing it to my previous post about it, I found that it has developed some strong blood orange taste which has dominated over the herbaceous notes that have so much fascinated me before. The acidity has considerably risen being on the border of volatile acidity revealing that the wine may be knowing its last drinkable period before developing i...

 While listening to the podcast "Auf einem Glas"  I came to a moment when Gerhard Retter , at the end of a fascinating interview says "Trinken bildet, saufen macht dumm!"  or "Drinking educates, to get drunk makes you dumb". This is a sentence that got directly stuck on my mind and it could make no more sense to me. As I am getting deeper into the world of wine, I am subsequently valuing how certain wines translate not only a specific terroir but also the culture of the place where they come from. Authenticity is something tremendously important for me and we, as customers, should always look for something that offers a genuine feeling of belonging. To the people who often complain about the over inflated price of wines which are supposed be good, I do believe you can find great value wines which can still be faithful to its origins.  And that is exactly what I have found in this Der Dritte Ritter from the Frey winery. Original from Rheinhessen this cuvée ...

The year was 2016 when Aldi Nord has launched a publicity campaign which has somehow irritated me:       Translated to English, this would mean something like: "Uncomplicated, because you don't need 10 kinds of lemon varieties, but just lemons." This simplification of products, its specificities and varieties to the general public is one of the main reasons why we are losing a rich heritage of fruits and vegetables a bit all over the world. There are major parts of our society which are ignoring the diversity existing in our nature and how you can use it to enrich your diet.  Exactly the same happens with grapes.  I was born in a wine region that still partially insists on planting "international" grapes  in order to make it more visible and understandable to the external market. Even though you can find some nice examples of Syrah around, I have tried too many Gewürztraminer or Cabernet Sauvignon that do not really reflect the characteristics of the t...