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.

Petit Verdot - Jumilla, Spain

Petit Verdot is one of those grapes that probably every (somewhat serious) wine drinker has had at some point, though until recently, it was probably only in a blend.  In its best known incarnation, Petit Verdot is one of the "classic" varieties planted in the Bordeaux region of France.  It has never been a majority player in Bordeaux, but it is popular with wine makers there for its ability to add color, structure and aroma to the classic Bordeaux blend.

The major problem with Petit Verdot in Bordeaux vineyards was that it ripens very late, even later than Cabernet Sauvignon, so the grapes only reached full ripeness in the warmest years (its name means "little green" because of the fact that under improper ripening conditions, the grapes never undergo veraison and remain as unusable small green berries).  As a result of this, many estates pulled out their Petit Verdot vines in the 1960's and 70's, reducing the total vineyard area of the grape to less than 300 ha by the 1980's.  As vintages have gotten progressively warmer through the 90's and 2000's, many estates are replanting Petit Verdot vines (or, in some cases, tending to vines that they had previously abandoned) and are using a bit more of it in their blends.  By 2000, total acreage in Bordeaux had reached about 400 ha.

Many new world climates are much warmer and less variable than Bordeaux, so plantings of Petit Verdot have started to appear and have taken off in some regions.  Australia leads the way with four times more Petit Verdot plantings than France and a fairly substantial number of varietal bottlings.  That California is very high on the list (with about 900 ha planted) shouldn't be too much of a surprise given the large number of Meritage bottlings in the area and the fact that varietally labeled wines can have up to 25% of other grapes in the blend (so some Petit Verdot probably sneaks in to quite a few wines labeled simply "Cabernet Sauvignon," "Merlot," what have you).  Petit Verdot is used mainly as a blending grape here, though there are a few varietal bottlings as well.  When I visited Long Island, NY, wine country a few years back I was surprised to find a few varietal Petit Verdot bottlings which were much better than I expected them to be.  It pops up in other states throughout the US as well, with Virginia in particular doing a lot with the grape.

Spain doesn't figure in any of the statistics for Petit Verdot given by Wikipedia or The Oxford Companion to Wine, but there is apparently quite a bit of the grape planted here.  According to one source, the grape may be native to southern Spain and was brought to the Bordeaux region by the Romans several thousand years ago.  The grape's ripening profile certainly points to an origin outside the cooler Bordeaux region, but the lack of specific records and an unknown parentage mean that for now, the grape's true origins are shrouded in mystery.  Whatever the case turns out to be, parts of Spain are nearly ideal environments for ripening Petit Verdot properly as the growing seasons here are longer and warmer than in Bordeaux, giving the grape a chance to make it all the way through the ripening process.

The wine that I was able to find was the 2005 Finca Omblancos "Denuño" bottling from the Jumilla region of Spain which I picked up for a mere $10 (it is 90% Petit Verdot with 5% each of Monastrell (the local name for Mourvedre) and Syrah).  Jumilla is located in the broader region called the Levante, which is the elevated, extremely dry and extremely warm area right in the middle of Spain.  Summer temperatures here can reach 104 degrees Fahrenheit (40 Celsius) and the dry climate means that the growers/producers can let the grapes hang on the vine until they're ripe without worrying too much about harvest time rains.  In the glass, this wine was an opaque, inky purple-black color.  The nose was nicely aromatic with blackberry and blackcurrant fruits along with some smoke and bacon.  On the palate the wine was full bodied with medium acidity and fairly high tannins.  There were dense flavors of blackberry and blackcurrant fruit with substantial earthy flavors of smoke and charcoal.  Right out of the bottle, this wine is a pure bruiser and the tannins are fierce.  After being open for a little while though, the tannins settled down a bit, but this is a wine that needs food badly unless you enjoy having the insides of your cheeks stripped out by tannins.  It is a big big wine for the shocking price of $10 and is tailor made for a smoky grilled steak.