Albillo - Castilla Y León, Spain

Over the weekend I received an email from the American Journal of Enology and Viticulture (which I subscribe to) letting me know that they had just put up a few new ePress articles (which, I think, are in-press articles slated for an upcoming print run of the journal, but which haven't been officially published yet).  As I was scanning through the articles, one entitled "Genetic origin of the grapevine Tempranillo" caught my eye (citation 1 below).  The parentages of a lot of really important wine grape have been discovered in the past 10-15 years, but this was the first paper that I could remember seeing regarding Tempranillo, whose full parentage has remained essentially a mystery until now.  A Spanish research team did discover a parent-offspring relationship between Tempranillo and Albillo Mayor in 2010 (citation 2 below), but this most recent paper confirms that Tempranillo is the offspring of Albillo Mayor and Benedicto.

It just so happened that I had a tasting note that was awaiting the Fringe Wine treatment from a wine featuring the Albillo grape, so I started to do a little bit more research.  Friends, Albillo is a difficult grape to get a handle on.  The name Albillo first pops up in the literature in a 15th Century agricultural work by Alonso de Herrera, and it looks like since then, the name has been given to many different grapes which had some physical characteristics in common (small, white aromatic berries that ripen early), but which weren't necessarily related to one another.  By the 19th Century, some authorities were attempting to reduce the confusion by appending place names to some Albillo cultivars to indicate their geographical origin and to differentiate them from other Albillo varieties.  This didn't really work, and so the confusion persists to some extent today.

There are several grapes that have Albillo as a part of their name or as an accepted synonym, but officially there is no grape known simply as Albillo.  Kind of.  As far as I can tell, the Spanish government actually lumps all the various Albillo grapes together under the single name "Albillo," so planting statistics actually reflect the totals of all Albillo grapes.  All grapes called Albillo are not the same, though, as the VIVC recognizes at least five genetically distinct Albillo grapes (though there are possibly more than that).  Albillo Real seems to be the most common form of Albillo, as most of the VIVC's synonyms refer back to this grape.  Wikipedia insists that only Albillo Real is ever referred to simply as Albillo, though there is no source given for that bit of information.  My guess is that the author of the Wikipedia post is saying this because only Albillo Real has just "Albillo" as an accepted synonym, which may be true, but isn't sufficient to make that particular claim.  Chasselas actually has "Albillo" as a synonym as well, though Chasselas and Albillo Real are not the same grape.

Albillo Mayor seems to be much less common as the paper proclaiming its parental link to Tempranillo indicates that it covers 773 hectares of land in Castilla Y León, which accounts for only .08% of the total vineyard area of Spain.  I'm not sure where that statistic comes from since, as noted above, I'm not aware of any statistics that track the various individual Albillo varieties and this particular bit of information is not given a citation in the article text.  The other Albillos (Albillo Krimskii, Albillo de Albacete and Albillo Real de Granada) appear to be much less important, as there is virtually no information about them online.  Another paper in the email from the American Journal of Enology and Viticulture (citation 3 below) identifies another Albillo cultivar known as Albillo Dorado, about which there is likewise not much information other than that it is definitely genetically distinct from Albillo Real and should be considered as a separate cultivar.

Albillo Real and Albillo Mayor are likewise genetically distinct varieties (citation 2 below), but if your bottle of wine only indicates "Albillo," how are you to know which one you have?  The only real clue that  I can find has to do with geography.  Many sources (the Oxford Companion to Wine, citation 1 and citation 3 below among them) indicate that Albillo Mayor is more widely cultivated in the Castilla Y León region of Spain while Albillo Real is cultivated in the Castilla-La Mancha region just south of Castilla Y León.  The wine that I picked up was labeled as Castilla Y León and the winery is the in the Ribera del Duero, which is given special mention in the OCW for their plantings of Albillo Mayor.  On the other hand, Wikipedia indicates that Albillo Real is planted primarily in the Ribera del Duero as well, though I suspect that the Wikipedia page isn't to be trusted on this matter.  I mentioned above that the official planting statistics lump all of the Albillo's together in a single category called "Albillo," and since the author of the Wikipedia page believes that any reference to just "Albillo" must refer to Albillo Real, you can see how there might be cause for misunderstanding.

All that said, I'm still not 100% sure which Albillo I might have tried.  The odds seem to suggest that Albillo Real is the most likely candidate, but the winery's location might indicate otherwise.  I'd certainly like to believe that this is Albillo Mayor because of the new-found link to Tempranillo, but I just don't feel like the evidence is substantial enough to say with any certainty.  In the meantime I guess all I can do is just claim that this wine is from Albillo and leave it at that.

The wine that I was able to try was the 2008 Valduero "Yunquera" Albillo from the Castilla Y León region of Spain.  I picked this bottle up from my friends at Curtis Liquors for about $18.  In the glass this wine was a fairly light silvery lemon color.  The nose was intense and unusual with pear, banana, asparagus and mint aromas.  On the palate the wine was on the fuller side of medium with fairly high acidity.  There were flavors of tart, fresh lemons and green apples, white pear, cooked asparagus and something slightly leesy on the back end.  This wine was searingly tart with lemon really dominating the flavor profile.  The sour flavor made it difficult to drink on its own, but it would stand up to dishes like chicken piccata fairly well I think.  Overall, I thought it was very interesting, whatever the actual grape variety turns out to be, and it's definitely worth a look for fans of bright, citrusy, high acid white wines.



CITATIONS

1) Ibanez, J., Munoz-Organero, G., Zinelabidine, L.H., de Andres, M.T., Cabello, F., & Martinez-Zapater, J.M.  2012 . Genetic origin of the grapevine cultivar tempranillo.  American Journal of Enology and Viticulture.  In Press.

2) Santana, J.C., Heuertz, M., Arranz, C., Rubio, J.A., Martinez-Zapater, J.M., & Hidalgo, E.  2010.  Genetic structure, origins and relationships of grapevine cultivars from the Castilian plateau of Spain.  American Journal of Enology and Viticulture.  61:2 pp 214-224.

3) Gonzalez, M.F., Gascuena, J.M., Morales, A.M. 2012.  Identification and relationships of grapevine cultivars authorized for cultivation in Castilla La Mancha (Spain).  American Journal of Enology and Viticulture.  In Press.

Prieto Picudo - Castilla Y León, Spain

Prieto Picudo is not a very interesting grape. I know that's not the best way to get you interested in reading more about it, but as far as I can tell, it's the honest truth. The Wikipedia page for it is not only not informative and very short, but it was almost certainly written by either the winery whose bottle is shown in the picture or by some other kind of PR organization with a pretty shaky grasp on the English language. The entry in the Oxford Companion to Wine isn't much better (though, as you might expect, their English is impeccable). They tell us that the grape is grown on about 5,000 hectares of land around the city of León in northwestern Spain. Further, the grape is "unusual," "musky," and "light in color but very distinctive." It is permitted for use in the Tierra de León, Valles de Benavente, Valtiendas DO regions, but a good deal of the production is bottled under the Vino de la Tierra Castilla y León heading, which is essentially the Spanish equivalent to a Vin de Pays in France or an IGT in Italy. Why much of the wine is relegated to this lower quality rung is a question that isn't explored or answered.

Aside from that, there isn't much to say. A comment left on the VINEgeek site informs us that the word Prieto means "dark," referring to the fact that it is a dark-skinned grape, and Picudo means "peaked," which refers to the sharp taper at the bottom of the bunches. The always excellent Catavino adds that the grape is thought to be native to the León region of Spain and there are at least two clonal variants of Prieto Picudo: one with oval-shaped berries and one with round berries with the latter type being preferred for wine-making. Interestingly, that post from Catavino is from 2005 and the writer there seems pretty excited about the possibilities for Prieto Picudo given the wines that he tasted. In 2010, a different writer for Catavino was much less enthusiastic, saying in reference to six different Prieto Picudo based wines that he had recently tried: "To just about anyone, they were awful." To be clear, he wasn't slamming Prieto Picudo as a varietal, as he does say later in the pieces that he has had some good examples. His concern is more with the wineries, or at least the wineries represented in this particular tasting, and their improper treatment of the grape once it leaves the vine. Without knowing exactly which wines he tasted and exactly what their sin was, it's hard to come a judgement of one's own, though.

And that's about it. There is a shocking lack of up-to-date books on Spanish wine, and the only older book that I have (the 1999 edition of Julian Jeffs' The Wines of Spain) doesn't make any mention of Prieto Picudo at all. I've only seen wines made from the grape in one wine shop in the Boston area (Marty's in Newton) within the last year, but, weirdly, they had two different examples. The one that I bought was the 2006 Dominio Dostares "Estay" from Castilla Y León, and I paid about $16 for it.  In the glass the wine was a fairly deep purple ruby color that was nearly opaque at the core.  The nose was moderately aromatic with red cherry, strawberry and red berry fruit along with some baking spice, chocolate and smoke.  On the palate the wine was medium bodied with medium acidity and low tannins.  There were flavors of red cherries and both stewed and fresh, brambly red berry fruit (as an aside, the tasting note "red berry fruit" makes me a little uncomfortable as I try to be as precise as I can, but sometimes I just have a vague sense of fruit that is red and berryish which doesn't announce its presence in a more assertive way, so "red berry fruit" it is).  There was also a touch of baking spice and a kind of cedar-y woodiness as well.  As it opened up, it picked up something that I've never really been able to put a name to, but which is always unwelcome in my glass.  The closest I can come to describing it is that it tastes kind of like the strawberry flavor of those awful candies that Life Savers makes called Creme Savers.  In my notes I write "strawberries and cream," but it's that artificial kind of cream that those candies had (or, similarly, like the artificial cream flavor in Cream Soda soft drinks).  I've picked it up in red wines made from a variety of grapes, so I'm guessing it's something that happens during the winemaking process, but when it shows up, it's a total deal-breaker for me.  This wine wasn't the worst offender that I've ever tasted, but that flavor was there.  I'm willing to try another example of wine made from this grape from another producer, but I probably won't go out of my way to seek one out or pick one up. 

Rufete - Castilla Y León, Spain

A few months back, I purchased and drank a wine made from a significant percentage of the grape Rufete, but I've been sitting on my tasting note without writing about the grape for a few reasons.  First of all, the wine that I tried was a blend with 60% Rufete and 40% Tempranillo and, whenever possible, if I'm writing about an individual grape, I like to use the US varietal labeling law as my guideline: if a wine contains 75% of a given varietal, then the bottle can be labeled with just that varietal name.  In other words, the US government feels that if a bottle has 75% juice from a single grape, then that grape commands enough of a presence within the wine that the bottle can carry only that grape's name and that this presentation is not in any way misleading to the consumer.  Now, that's plenty controversial and I understand that, but I had to make a decision for this site on what the limit would be and I chose that standard.  I'll confess that I didn't do it out of a conviction that 75% is sufficiently high enough to disregard the other 25%.  I did it because it gave me the most leeway in allowing me to write about individual grapes.  

The second reason is that the wine that I tried was a rosé.  If I'm writing about a grape I've never had before, I try as hard as I can to find a "classic" example of a wine made from that grape.  Generally I'm looking for a still, full red or full white dry table wine so I can try to get a sense for what the grape is all about.  Of course, the "classic" style for some grapes differs from that formula (like Brachetto d'Acqui, whose classic style is sweet and a little fizzy), but as a general rule, that's what I'm after.  Try as I might, I was unable to find another wine made primarily from (or even partially from) Rufete, so the rosé is all I've got.

The third reason I kept putting off writing about this grape is that there just isn't a lot of information out there about it.  Wikipedia only mentions Rufete in passing in an article about Port wine grapes (Rufete is considered to be merely "good" for Port production, apparently).  The Oxford Companion to Wine has a little more information, but not much.  From there we get the information that Rufete used to be known as Tinta Pinheira, and that it is grown in northern Portugal (5500 hectares under vine) and western Spain (686 hectares) where the grape is used to make light, fruity wines.  Ryan Opaz over at Catavino helps to round out a profile of the grape by telling us that the grape is prone to oxidation if not carefully handled in the vineyard and winery.  Further, while the tendency is for winemakers to make a lighter style wine from the grape, it is capable of producing denser, more structured wines if handled properly. The winery itself also has some information on the grape on their website, though it's a little tough to parse in places.

So with all of those things in mind, I still bought the wine and drank it and wrote my notes.  Understand that I'm going into my review with the full knowledge that this wine is not a perfect exemplar for the Rufete grape, but it's all I could find.  At the end of the day, there's not any valid judgement I can pass except on the wine itself (for the record, this is the general attitude I adopt for nearly every wine I write about and drink though there are exceptions).

The Rufete that I was able to pick up was the 2010 Bodegas Valdeáguila "Viña Salamanca" rosé that, as mentioned previously, is a blend of 60% Rufete and 40% Tempranillo.  I picked this wine up at a local shop for about $13.  It's a "Vino de la Tierra," which is roughly equivalent to the French Vin de Pays or the Italian IGT classification level.  The winery is located in the city of Salamanca, Spain, which is about halfway between the Portuguese border and the city of Madrid in Western Spain. 

In the glass, this wine had a deep, rosy red color.  The nose carried nice mouthwatering aromas of maraschino cherries and red berry fruit.  On the palate, the wine was medium bodied with medium acidity.  There were candied red fruit flavors with some maraschino cherry and strawberry licorice with a touch of spice.  The wine was completely dry, but the fruit had a candied quality to it that made it very easy to drink.  This isn't one of those lean, minerally rosé wines that make excellent aperitifs.  It's heavy on the fruit and drinks more like a light red.  It's certainly not a profound wine, but it's plenty enjoyable and was good company on a hot summer day.  I'm still on the hunt for a red wine made from Rufete so if anyone in the Boston area has a hot lead, please let me know about it.

**UPDATE** I was recently able to try a 100% Rufete rosado from this same producer and my tasting note for that wine can be found in this post.