Tabla de contenidos para April-June 2018 en Selectus Wines

 Everything in life has its origin. We can discuss and debate the big ones... the origin of the universe, the origin of humanity, the origin of medicine ... or we can take a look at the origin of things that are of particular interest to us, such as the origin of viticulture, the origin of a winery, and so on… It’s time to sit back and enjoy... Es el momento de relajarse y disfrutar... “Origins” then is broadly the theme of this latest issue of Selectus Wines. We talk about them in an article on Llopart, one of the oldest cava companies in the industry – a Llopert family ancestor started growing their vines many centuries ago. We also report on how another old, traditional wine company, Bodegas Torres, is…

SPAIN A CORUÑA AC Hotel Palacio del Carmen. Santiago de Compostela ALAVA Hotel Marqués de Riscal – A Luxury Collection Hotel Restaurant Zaldiarán . Vitoria-Gasteiz ALICANTE Hospes Amerigo AC Hotel Ciutat d´Alcoi ASTURIAS AC Hotel Forum Oviedo. Oviedo Rest. Casa Marcial. Arriondas Rest. La Salgar. Gijón BARCELONA Hotel Mercer Hotel Le Méridien Rest. Rías de Galicia Monvínic Rest. Moments Santa Eulalia Joyería Rabat Joyería Suárez Hotel Majestic Hotel Omm Rest. Windsor Hotel Palace Rest. Caelis Celler de Gelida Rest. La Clara Arsenal Masculino Four Points by Sheraton Rest. Via Veneto Rest. Abac Rest. L´Oliana Hotel Rey Juan Carlos I Rest. Gaig AC Hotel Victoria Suites Concesionario Mercedes Cars Barcelona Concesionario Maserati-Ferrari-Bentley Cars Gallery Rest. Bravo 24 Hotel W Barcelona Club de Golf Sant Cugat. Sant Cugat del Vallés Club de…

JOAN ARBOIX ROURA Mallorca, 1981 @Joanet112 Professional sommelier since 2006, he began his career as a sommelier at the Moo restaurant (1* Michelin) in Barcelona. He has also worked for the Ritz Carlton in Spain and Chile as a sommelier and maître d’. He currently works at the Andreu Genestra (1* Michelin) restaurant in Mallorca. Balearic Islands Sommelier Champion 2008. Sumiller profesional desde el año 2006. Trabajó como sumiller en el restaurante MOO de Barcelona (1*Michelin). Ha trabajado para Ritz Carlton en España y Chile como Sumiller y Jefe de Sala. Actualmente en el restaurante Andreu Genestra (1*Michelin) en Mallorca. Campeón de Sommeliers de les Illes Balears en 2008. ANNA VICENS Girona, 1973 @annavicens Professional sommelier since 1997, she is currently President of the Catalan Association of Sommeliers, a member…

D.O. Navarra - Bodegas Chivite (Grupo Perelada) - Villatuerta, Navarra - Spain - www.chivite.com - 55,00€ - 100% Chardonnay Chivite, today part of the Perelada group, was founded in 1647 and has eleven generations under its belt. The Colección 125 is a reference to the 125 years since the company’s first export shipment in 1860, and the collection was launched in 1985 to mark this event. Since then, the wines in this range have focused on expressing the qualities of each terroir and each harvest. The 2015 vintage of the Chivite Colección White was the last vintage overseen by winemaker, Denis Dubourdieu, making it a very special vintage for the winery. For this reason, the company's CEO, Julián Chivite, decided to turn this vintage into a tribute…

BODEGAS RODA CORIMBO I 2011 D.O. Ribera de Duero / Bodegas Roda / La Horra, Burgos, Spain / www.bodegaslahorra.es / P.V.P.: 41,00€ / 100% Tempranillo. After working for twenty years in Roda (DOCa Rioja), the team wanted to diversify and they started making Corimbo (DO Ribera del Duero) in La Horra. The first vintage, the 2008, was released in 2010. Six vintages of Corimbo are now available on the market and only three of Corimbo I. Sourced from vines of over 50 years of age, the wine has been aged for 16 months in French (80%) and American (20%) oak barrels. Appearance: Intense cherry red hue, clean and bright, strong intensity. Nose: Ripe black fruit, ripe red plums, and sweet spices against a cocoa backdrop. Palate: Corpulent, mature, balsamic and…

Vinos de la Tierra de Castilla y León - Sardón de Duero, Valladolid - Spain - www.terrasgauda.com/#quinta_sardonia - 32,00€ - 72,5% Tinto Fino 21,5% Cabernet Sauvignon 4,5% Syrah, 1% Malbec, 0,5% Merlot The Quinta Sardonia winery respects the principles of biodynamic growing in the 22 hectares of vineyards it owns in Villlabáñez and Sardón del Duero. Quinta Sardonia is part of the Terras Gauda Group. The winery was set up by Peter Sisseck (Hacienda Monasterio), who put Jérôme Bougnaud, from his team at the Dominio de Pingus winery, in charge as technical manager. The vineyards were planted in 1999 and 2000, and the first vintage was released in 2002. Its delicious, elegant and versatile wines are the result of incredible work carried out in the vineyards and…

25.000 members of the wine trade profesionales del vino 1.420 exhibitors 16 expositores countries 76 países of international buyers around the world compradores internacionales de todo el mundo The latest edition of Vinisud took place in Montpellier from 18 to 20 February and attracted 1,420 exhibitors from 16 countries and over 25,000 members of the wine trade. The show once again lived up to the expectations of the show organizers, as well as the wine producers we met, who were delighted at the increasing number of international buyers from 76 countries visiting the show. In terms of the Spanish wine producers, although there were some wineries present which had previously exhibited at the show, we saw something of a “revolution” with a high number of first-time exhibitors, many of whom…

I first visited this extraordinary estate at the end of the 80s, shortly after it had been acquired by the Chivite family. It is a manor with a rich history, set in a spectacular 355 hectares of countryside, traversed by a winding river in a valley framed by the Pyrenees foothills. At the time it was a place of great natural beauty yet totally devoid of vineyards despite the fact that the quality of its vineyards had been documented since the 11th century. There was practically nothing left standing apart from some remains of what was once a great manor house with a chapel and a tower... a few stones, part of the neoclassical chapel, and not much else, located in a lovely setting with an exceptional microclimate and populated…

The colourful world of wine offers us many more nuances than those established by its rigid traditional typology. Although it would not appear easy to break away from the typecasting which states that red wines are red, pink or salmon-coloured wines are rosés, and those with golden and yellowish tones, white (a colour distinction reflected by the different production methods), there is, in fact, a rare breed of ambiguous wines, which is becoming more common and daring to challenge this rigid traditional classification. Unique, personal, sometimes bizarre, often impossible to forget, these borderline wines almost always reveal the nonconformist character of their mentors: experimental wine growers and winemakers who upset convention by using grape varieties of an uncertain or versatile nature, or terroirs capable of transforming the colour or the…

OSSIAN VINOS Y VIDES OSSIAN 2014 Vinos de la Tierra de Castilla y León / Nieva, Segovia - Spain / www.osianvinos.com / P.V.P.: 25,00€ / 100% Verdejo The Verdejo with which this wine is crafted comes from pre-phylloxera vineyards of between 100 and 200 years of age, grown organically and certified as such since 2001. They grow at 900 metres altitude in the village of Nieva (Segovia). These provide the perfect, high-quality raw material that is used to create this wine, one of Spain’s great white wines. Appearance: Yellow with old-gold tints. Clean and bright, unctuous in the glass. Nose: An aromatic entry to the palate of toasted sugar over oaky notes that gives way to timid aromas of citrus and white fruit, reminiscent of this varietal’s expression before its…

D.O.Ca. Rioja - Barón de Chirel (Grupo Marqués de Riscal) - Elciego, Alava - Spain - www.marquesderiscal.com - 67,40€ - 70% Tempranillo 30% Otras sin especificar Barón de Chirel is part of the Herederos del Marqués de Riscal Group, and comes from a selection of extremely old vineyards (80 to 110-years-old), with a very low yield. This wine is only produced in small quantities in vintages that are rated as exceptional. Since its creation, the Marqués de Riscal Group has been producing wines in the DOCa.Rioja using Bordeaux-style production methods. As a result, its work has always been ahead of its time and other producers in the region. Fermented in small French Allier oak vats, the wine then goes into barrels of the same wood, where it…

BODEGA CONTINO. VIÑA DEL OLIVO 2015 D.O.Ca. Rioja / Bodega Contino (Grupo CVNE) Laserna, Alava - Spain / www.cvne.com/tp-bodega/cotino/ / P.V.P.: 59,75€ / 90% Tempranillo, 10% Graciano Contino (Laguardia, Rioja Alavesa) is part of the Compañía Vinícola del Norte de España (CVNE) Group’s wineries along with Imperial (Villalba, Rioja Alta) and Viña Real (Rioja Alavesa). Contino is known for being the first château in Rioja, founded in 1973, although its history dates back to the 16th century. It is one of the Spanish wineries that has most successfully combined tradition with innovation, and which has particularly invested in working all its vineyard plots individually. The harvesting is carried out by hand, first selecting the bunches in the vineyards and then on the selection table. After the cold maceration and the…

D.O. Toro - Pedrosa del Rey, Valladolid Spain - www.bodegasanroman.com - 25,00€ - 100% Tinta de Toro San Román is produced by the Maurodos winery, which belongs to the Mauro winery (Tierra de Castilla y León), in the Toro designation of origin. The winemaker, Mariano García (Bodegas Aalto, DO Ribera del Duero), set up the winery in 1997 and it now has 100 hectares of Tinta de Toro with some Garnacha, growing in pebbly and sandy terrain in San Román de Hornija and Villaester. San Román’s vocation is to draw out the potential of the terroir and the varietal, expressing the weather conditions over the year, but with none of the roughness and astringency that the wines from this area used to be known for. The vineyards…

Llopart is the second oldest wine and cava producer in the industry. Its history dates back to the 14th century, when Bernadus Leopardi (remember that name), an ancestor of the Llopart family, received the grant of some vineyards currently located in the Heretat de Can Llopart, in the municipality of Subirats (Barcelona). There is a document testifying to this grant written in Latin and dating from 1385. The different generations of the Llopart family that followed combined wine growing with the cultivation of cereals and olives, until around the end of the 19th century, when the family began dedicating itself exclusively to its vineyards. In 1887, the great-grandfather of Pere Llopart Vilarós laid the foundation for Llopart sparkling wines (the concept of cava did not yet exist...) when he produced…

In the 1980s, the current chairman of Torres and fourth-generation family member, Miguel A. Torres, got wind of a theory held by a professor at the University of Montpellier, Professor Boubals. Boubals believed that, despite the devastation caused by the phylloxera infestation, it might be possible to find old surviving vines of varietals thought to be practically extinct. To try to find these “treasures,” local and regional media were called upon to ask for help from the growers who, if they came across a vine that they could not identify, could contact the Torres technicians to try to discover what type of vine it was. This initiative bore fruit in the mid-1980s, when an unidentified vine was found in the Garraf (Barcelona) area. The technicians weren’t able to identify the…

D.O.Ca. Rioja - Laserna, Alava, Spain - www.cvne.com/tp-bodega/cotino/ - 24,50€ - 80% Viura, 15% Garnacha Blanca, 5% Malvasía Contino (Laguardia, Rioja Alavesa) is part of the Compañía Vinícola del Norte de España (CVNE) Group’s wineries along with Imperial (Villalba, Rioja Alta) and Viña Real (Rioja Alavesa). Contino is known for being the first château in Rioja, founded in 1973, although its history dates back to the 16th century. It is one of the Spanish wineries that has most successfully combined tradition with innovation, and which has particularly invested in working all its vineyard plots individually. The harvesting is carried out by hand, first selecting the bunches in the vineyards and then on the selection table. After the cold maceration and the start of the alcoholic fermentation in…

BODEGA ASTER ASTER CRIANZA 2014 D.O. Ribera de Duero / Bodega Aster (Grupo La Rioja Alta) Anguix, Burgos - Spain /www.bodegasaster.com / P.V.P.: 14,00€ / 100% Tinta del país. Bodega Aster (DO Ribera del Duero) is part of the La Rioja Alta Group (DOCa Rioja) along with Torre de Oña (DOCa Rioja) and Lagar de Cervera (DO Rias Baixas). The grapes come from the Fuentecojo, Otero Joven and La Cueva vineyards located around the winery in Anguix, in Burgos, and growing at 700 metres altitude in silty-loam soil. Harvesting was carried out by hand with the grapes going into crates of 20 kg. The wine underwent 22 months ageing in new French oak barrels (70%) and the remainder in French oak barrels previously used for two vintages. Appearance: Dark cherry…

D.O.Ca. Rioja - Cenicero, La Rioja Spain - www.bodegasriojanas.com - 200,00€ - Tempranillo y Graciano This is a very interesting wine from Bodegas Riojanas. It has received plaudits from Spanish and international wines guides but, unfortunately, is a bit on the expensive side. For its first year of production they selected 32 plots. This vintage was produced from grapes from 17 plots, 16 of which are Tempranillo and only one is Graciano, with an average age of over 60 years and very low yields. It comes in an elegant box with two sections: in the upper part the bottle is presented lying on its side with information about the winery and the plots; while in the lower part there is a small drawer containing a jar of…

The 8th edition of Enofusión, part of the 16th Reale Seguros’ Madrid Fusión gastronomic summit, were three busy days of wine tastings, which took place in Madrid’s Palacio Municipal de Congresos from 22 to 24 January, 2018. There were tasting presentations on various topical themes in the event’s dedicated presentation area. Enofusión is an important event in Spain, not just because of its content, but because it is an integral part of another high-profile event, Madrid Fusión. Following an agreement with the Enofusion show organisers, Selectus Wines had the unique privilege of being able to participate in all the show’s tastings. And what better way to start than with a tasting given by one of the oldest and most prestigious wineries in Spain: Marqués de Riscal. We were honoured with…

Vins i Licors Grau in Palafrugell (Girona) chose the first day of March to invite a group of journalists along to its new facilities that were inaugurated a few months ago for the company’s 40th-anniversary celebrations, which we reported on in the last issue of this magazine. This time the visit was more personal and more leisurely and they were able to talk to us about their activity in more depth than they could at the inauguration event. We were also able to visit the offices above the store, which we had been unable to do a few months previously... After the office tour, we were shown into the brand-new meeting room with state-of-the-art technical equipment and sound system, located in the basement. There we enjoyed a wine tasting from…