Wine Fictions

 After having recently been in France a neighbour of mine knocked at my door and said he has brought a special bottle for me. In a rather ecstatic way he has told me how he has got into an endlessly charming shop that literally was my face (whatever that means) and spontaneously asked the owner for a unique wine that could surprise someone who works with wine. After a short thought the owner of the shop has chosen this bottle that I wanted to tell you about.  Without any information on it, I dare to say that I have tried it almost blind, feeling indecisive whether it was Cabernet Franc or Pinot Noir. Too spicy for being Pinot and too soft to be Cabernet Franc. There was some intensive and fresh minerality, some light spices and delicate fruit profile in a lively and complex composition.  Being a natural wine, there was also some funkiness but very decently integrated not overloading the main features of the grape. As far as I have managed to know, the fermentation occurre...

  There is an almost infinite fascination when trying a wine blind.  The brain starts rotating quite fast, trying to find equivalents to wines that we have tried before, to specific grapes, similar aging development and, not the least, a brief analysis of the person who has brought the wine.  The same way that my friends often suspect that I offer them Portuguese wines, in this case I first assumed that I would have a Bordeaux in glass. But as I have first felt it, I directly tended to an aged Pinot as it was aromatically pretty delicate revealing some earthiness along with fine vanishing cherries. As my friend smiled and said it was no Pinot, I needed a complete mental reset as I was almost sure I was right.  After rethinking the wine again from scratch I tended to Rhone as it seemed to me to have some leathery notes which time have made softer.  Wrong again.  I have to confess that it was quite a long time since I last felt I had no idea what could be in ...

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...