I owe the many of you who live in the US a big apology. I have been concentrating far too much recently, particularly here in wine of the week, on wines available in the UK. Here, for a change, is a particularly satisfying red that seems to be exported exclusively to the US where winesearcher.com can identify 10 retailers, reasonably well distributed geographically.
As usual, prices vary considerably, from $12.99 to $19.99, as you can see via the link find this wine. The only downside is that when I first tasted this wine and researched its availability a month or two back, it was also on sale in Spain for 5.70 euros. But there is no doubt that there is currently a great whoop of enthusiasm among American wine drinkers for new wave Spanish wines, unpeturbed, it would seem, by the unfriendly euro:dollar exchange rate.
The wine itself is certainly not overpriced at $12.99 and it struck me as a first-class example of the sort of well-made, richly-flavoured reds that are now being made carrying all sorts of appellations that we might previously have associated with irredeemably old-fashioned, oxidized, over-alcoholic, soupy wines. (I did taste the 2002 vintage of this wine and found it a little too alcoholic and a little too oaky.) Alicante is hardly in wine’s Hall of Fame, is it? Yet here, from old vineyards at over 550m/1,800 ft above the Mediterranean, is a wine offering a great mouthful of flavour, well-balanced, based on the Monastrell/Mourvèdre that dominates vineyards down this Mediterranean coast but with 40 per cent of Tempranillo with a bit of Merlot, Cabernet Sauvignon and Syrah. (Did you know that according to the latest, 2004, statistics, Spain now grows nearly 3,000 hectares/7,500 acres of Syrah - nothing compared to the 83,000 ha of Garnacha/Grenache, or even the 10,000 ha of Cabernet Sauvignon – but Syrah is fast on the increase here as almost everywhere else.)
Monastrell can often be too strong, too sweet and dangerously animal-flavoured here but this is concentrated rather than sweet with good balance and well judged oak which is, apparently, a mixture of American, French and Russian. When tasting wines all over the world at the moment, I often pick up what seems to be a strange (as in unfamiliar rather than unpleasantly bizarre) nuance that sometimes turns out to be some eastern European oak – a certain spiciness combined with some rigidity is the best way I can describe it – but I didn’t pick it up on this wine, so powerful is the fruit. Yet the overall impression is long and satisfying.
Find out more about this enterprise, Bernabé Navarro, at www.bodegasbernabenavarro.com
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