Free Wine Friday - Blanco de Tempranillo and Petit Verdot Rosato, Vino de la Tierra de Castilla, La Mancha, Spain

Hello friends and neighbors, and welcome to the third installment of Free Wine Friday, where I write about interesting wines I've received as samples.  Today we'll be taking a look at two Spanish wines made from Tempranillo and Petit Verdot grapes.  While Tempranillo is obviously anything but a Fringe Wine grape, the wine we'll be looking at below is made in a very unique style.  Before we get there, though, I'd like to say a few words about how I got my hands on these wines.

A few months back, I was visiting Terra Vino, which is a really cool wine shop run by my friend Chris over in Brookline, MA.  While I was there, a distributor happened to drop by to pour some samples for Chris and he invited me over to taste a few of these wines with him.  Most of the wines that the distributor was pouring were these really interesting biodynamic California wines from an estate called Ambyth (whose Marsanne I'll be writing about next week).  I enjoyed these wines quite a bit but hadn't heard of them before or seen them anywhere else in Massachusetts, so I pressed the saleswoman for more information about which distribution company she worked for.  It turned out that she had just started her own distribution firm after working on the retail end of the wine trade for many years and was in the very early stages of getting her company up and running.

The woman's named was Monica Jenkins and her company is called MBJ Wine Group.  They're a fairly small operation now, but Monica is looking to bring some new and interesting wines into the state of Massachusetts, which is a goal I can certainly get behind.  We spoke for a while at Terra Vino and it turned out that Monica was looking for some editorial help with her blog and website, which I have been happy to provide.  I do receive compensation from MBJ for my services, so there is a financial relationship in place, but in the confines of my own site, I always try to stay as objective as I can about the wines that I try, no matter where they come from or under what circumstances.

I visited Monica's warehouse a few weeks ago because she had some interesting wines come in that she wanted me to try with her.  A winery in Spain called Pagodel Vicario, located in the Castilla-La Mancha region, had sent her several sample bottles for their entire line of wines, but two of them in particular stuck out to me (both were from the 2011 vintage).  The first was called Blanco de Tempranillo and when Monica first told me about it, I got really excited.  I have been trying to track down a wine made from Tempranillo Blanco, which is a white-berried mutation of the Tempranillo grape, for several months now, with no luck.  I was hoping that I might finally be able to try a wine made from this grape, but as soon as I saw the label, I knew it was not to be.  The label says "Vino blanco de uva tinta," which means something like "white wine made from red grapes."  Rather than the white-berried mutation, this was more like a blanc de noir, where the red-berried grapes are pressed lightly with as little skin contact as possible in order to collect only the white juice for fermentation, which is the same processed used to make this Blanc de Franc wine previously featured on this site.

Despite my initial disappointment, I was still eager to try this wine since I'd never seen Tempranillo vinified this way before.  The winery's website says that they picked the grapes for this wine on August 11, which is incredibly early, in order to retain freshness and acidity.  The wine is vinified and aged in temperature controlled stainless steel prior to bottling.  In the glass the wine was a silvery color with a slight pinkish tinge.  It's hard to tell from the winery's site whether the grapes were crushed then pressed or just pressed whole, but whichever the case there was just a bit of pigmentation that found its way into this wine.  On the nose the wine was fairly intense with apple, strawberry and cherry fruit aromas.  If I was smelling this blindfolded, I probably would have guessed that it was a rosé wine rather than a white.  On the palate the wine was on the fuller side of medium with medium acidity.  There were flavors of creamy ripe pear, strawberry and tart cherries.  Everything about this was screaming rosé to me except for the color of the wine in the glass.  This is a really cool wine with some pretty unique characteristics, even if it isn't necessarily all that complex.  I'm not sure what the retail price for something like this is, but if you're interested, feel free to email Monica at info@mbjwine.com.

The second wine that I tried was a rosé wine made from Petit Verdot grapes.  We've explored Spanish Petit Verdot around here before, so interested readers are advised to read this post for more information about the grape itself.  Every Petit Verdot based wine that I've ever tried has been inky black due to the grape's thick skins and small berry size, so I was very curious to see what a rosé wine made from 100% Petit Verdot would be like.  The winery's website indicates that the juice was left in contact with the skins for only 8 hours in making this wine, but the result is one of the most intensely colored rosé wines that I've ever seen.  In the glass this wine was a medium purple ruby color with a bright magenta rim.  The intensity of the color was shocking as I know I've had red wines that weren't this deep (like wines made from Schiava or even some Pinot Noir).  The nose was intense with waxy cherry and raspberry fruit along with a touch of licorice and rose petal.  On the palate the wine was on the fuller side of medium with fairly high acidity.  There was a bit of tannic grip to the wine as well, despite the brief skin contact time.  There were bright, electric flavors of red berry fruit and waxy candied cherries.  It wasn't complex, but it was intense and powerful.  This is the biggest, most insane rosé wine I've ever tasted.  It clocks in at 15% abv and in all honesty should probably be considered a red wine for food-matching purposes.  It is much friendlier and more approachable than a varietal red wine made from Petit Verdot grapes, as it doesn't have the tight, tough, intense tannins that those wines carry along for their first decade or so in bottle, but it is definitely not the kind of light, crisp, refreshing wine that most people are looking for when buying a rosé.  Drinking this is definitely a unique experience, so if you're interested, feel free to email Monica at info@mbjwines.com for more information.

Airén - Castilla La Mancha, Spain

Welcome, friends and neighbors, to Fringe Wine's 150th post!  To commemorate this special occasion I've decided to do something a little bit different.  Today's post will cover a grape that is actually the most planted grape (in terms of area) on planet Earth.  The name of that grape is Airén and it is planted on over 750,000 acres of land worldwide, though nearly all of it is located in central Spain.  For comparison's sake, it is estimated that Chardonnay is planted on about 400,000 acres of land throughout the world while Cabernet Sauvignon is planted on an estimated 435,000 acres.  Yet if you walk into your local wine store, chances are that you'll find dozens of bottles of Chardonnay or Cabernet Sauvignon, but you probably won't find a bottle of Airén.  Why is that?

Part of the reason is that Airén is planted at extremely low densities throughout central Spain (and is grown virtually nowhere else in the world).  While the grape does hold the title for most planted grape in terms of total area, it is thought that Chardonnay or Cabernet Sauvignon may be the most planted grape in the world in terms of total vines planted.  The average planting density for Airén vines in La Mancha is about 500-600 vines per acre.  By contrast, the planting densities in Bordeaux are around 3200 vines per acre on the low end and over 4000 vines per acre on the high end.  The area where Airén is primarily grown is the La Mancha plateau in central Spain whose name comes from the Moorish word "Manxa" which means "parched earth."  As you might expect, this area is very hot and very dry with summertime temperatures often in excess of 100 degrees Fahrenheit and yearly rainfall totals averaging about 16 inches per year.  In these extreme conditions, spacing the vines far apart serves two functions.  First, the space allows air to circulate freely around the vines which helps them cool off.  The area is also prone to severe frosts in the winter and, paradoxically, the increased air circulation can minimize frost damage to the vines as well.

The main reason for the wide spacing, though, has to do with the low rainfall the area receives.  High planting densities mean that there are a lot of plants and a lot of plants need a lot of water.  Spacing the plantings out lessens the competition between vines and allows them to survive on the meager resources, especially water, that the parched environment can provide.  Irrigation is technically illegal for vines in the EU, though the Oxford Companion to Wine assures us that this restriction is "easy, if initially quite expensive, to flout."  Given that wines produced from Airén grapes do not command any kind of premium, the costs associated with irrigation are probably not worth it for the growers, so the wide spacing is employed because, frankly, there aren't many other crops that could grow effectively and profitably in those conditions anyway.

Even if we factor in the low planting densities, though, Airén plantings are still about 1/5th of Cabernet Sauvignon plantings worldwide, which is a heck of a lot of vines.  Airén is much more widely planted than Sangiovese, for example, but Sangiovese-based wines are far more common than Airén based wines.  The answer to the riddle of Airén's lack of presence on the international wine scene is pretty simple.  The grapes make mostly uninteresting wines.  This was much more true about 30-40 years ago when the wines made from Airén grapes were often sloppily made and usually oxidized.  As temperature controlled fermentation vessels made their way into the area, the wine quality improved dramatically, though "neutral" and "crisp" seems to be the highest summit that wines from Airén grapes are capable of achieving.

Today most of the juice from Airén grapes is used either in bulk wine production or is shipped off and distilled into brandy, with only a small amount used for the production of quality table wines.  Why devote so much land to such an unprofitable and uninteresting grape?  In short, the climate is to blame again.  Airén is the grape of choice in this region because of its ability to survive and thrive in the hot, dry conditions of La Mancha.  Its drought resistance in particular has endeared it to the growers here for many centuries, with the earliest recorded mention of Airén occurring in 1615.  Its fortunes are beginning to turn, though, as many growers in central Spain are pulling up their Airén vines and replacing them with red grapes like Tempranillo.  EU vine pull incentives seem to be accelerating this trend, though Airén has a long way to go before it is in any danger of disappearing completely.

I was able to try two very different wines made from the Airén grape.  The first was the 2009 Casa del Aire from the Castilla region of Spain which I was able to find for about $9.  This wine was sealed with a synthetic cork that had leaked a bit in my cellar, leaving a bit of mold on the lip of the bottle.  I wiped the bottle clean and checked to see if the wine had oxidized, but it seemed to be mostly OK.  In the glass the wine was a fairly light lemon gold color.  The nose was moderately aromatic with green apple, pear and lemony citrus fruits.  On the palate the wine was on the lighter side of medium with medium acidity.  There were flavors of lemon peel and lemons with pear and a bit of green apple.  It was quite bitter and bland.  It is possible that it suffered somewhat as a result of the cork failure, but I've had other wines made from this grape and, in general, there isn't much to them.  This wine was pretty typical in that the best you can really hope for is a crisp, clean white wine that won't run you more than about $10 retail.  Given the wide variety of very good value wines on the market today, it's hard to recommend this wine unless you're just really looking for something you've never tried before.

The second wine that I tried was much more unusual.  It was an orange wine from Vinos Ambiz that was limited in production to only 200 bottles.  For those of you who don't know, orange wines are wines made from white grapes where the juice has been allowed to sit on the grape skins for some time after pressing.  In the usual process for making white wines, the grapes are pressed and the juice is separated from the rest of the grape matter immediately.  In red wine production, the juice is allowed to sit on the skins for awhile in order to pick up coloring and other flavor compounds from the skins.  So, essentially, orange wines are white wines that are made using the process for red wines.  Orange refers to the deeper color that many of these wines pick up as a result of their extended skin contact.  For those who are still confused, I'd highly recommend reading this illustrated blog post over at Hawk Wakawaka Wine Reviews.  To the left is a picture of what this orange wine looked like in my glass.  As you can see, not only is the color much deeper, but the wine is cloudy as well, which in this case is because the wine is unfined and unfiltered before being bottled.

I was able to pick this wine up from my friends over at the Spirited Gourmet in Belmont for about $25.  As you can see, I had bottle number 88 of 200.  The back label tells us that the wine is made from grapes harvested from 30 year old vines.  Further, there are no pesticides, fungicides or fertilizers used in the vineyard and absolutely nothing was added to the juice before, during or after fermentation.  Natural yeasts from the vineyard were used for the fermentation itself.  These guys are unabashedly in the "natural wine" camp, and you can read more about their philosophy on viticulture and winemaking at this blog here.

In the glass, this wine was a cloudy pinkish-orange color that looked an awful lot like grapefruit juice.  The nose was very aromatic with citrusy fresh-cut grapefruit and orange aromas.  On the palate the wine was medium bodied with medium acidity.  There was a kind of fruit cocktail thing going on in my glass with a bit of bitter orange peel and orange, pink grapefruit, apple, pear and white grape fruit flavors.  Unfortunately, a lot of these flavors were masked by a chalky bitterness that was much too present for my tastes.

Here's the thing about a wine like this.  If you took one look at the picture of the wine in my glass and read about their non-interventionist approach and you felt yourself starting to drool and get excited, then you'll probably really like this wine.  If you've never heard of "natural wine" or "orange wine" and are still trying to figure out why you can't see through the liquid in the picture above, then you might want to give this wine a wide berth.  Is it a good wine?  In its way, yes, it is good.  It's interesting and thought provoking in a lot of different ways.  Is it for everyone?  Absolutely not.  If you prefer your wine crystal clear and squeaky clean, the first bottle I wrote about is definitely more your speed.  For the rest of you, there is now, at most, 199 bottles of this wine left.  Good luck tracking it down.

Bonus trivia: In Japanese, the word "airen" means "soulmate."  It also means "lover" in Chinese.