Here’s a well-travelled bargain from one of the best-value wine regions in Spain, Jumilla, where producers such as Casa de la Ermita (whose estimable wines have been available at Oddbins and Waitrose in the UK) and Agapito Rico have demonstrated that the fruit ripened so easily there can be fashioned into certainly satisfying and increasingly sophisticated wines.
The prevailing grape is Monastrell (Mourvèdre) but local wisdom has it that this has to be tamed and blended with grape varieties regarded as more exotic in Jumilla such as Cabernet, Merlot, Syrah and Tempranillo. Escobera 2002 is the second vintage of a wine made here from 40 per cent Monastrell with 40 per cent Syrah and 20 per cent Cabernet Sauvignon by the itchy-footed Italian Alberto Antonini who also works in South America and all over Italy. (One Christmas I saw him between projects at the fish bar at Gatwick airport and it bothered me for days that I knew him, I knew he was winey, and I knew he was from continental Europe, but I just couldn’t place him.)
This particular blend is 40 per cent Monastrell, 40 per cent Syrah and 20 per cent Cabernet Sauvignon and it certainly delivers an amazing amount of flavour and pleasure for its original price (see below) at Booths supermarkets of £4.99 – full, rich and lively without being sweet, facile or hot. Just the thing for the chilly winds now blowing in much of the northern hemisphere.
The wine is made exclusively for UK importers Liberty Wines at Casa de la Ermita from fruit bought from leading grower of the region Pedro José Martinez in the Carche valley and I guess that the key to its combination of richness and liveliness is altitude, so often Spain’s trump card. The vineyards are apparently at 750-800 metres altitude so that nights are relatively refreshing even this far south (on a latitude about halfway between those of Madrid and Jerez for example) where Monastrell manages a ripeness not even seen often in Bandol where, as Mourvèdre, it underpins the smartest reds of Provence.
Escobera is usually sold alongside a more expensive Crianza but because no was made in the rather problematical vintage of 2002, grapes that would have gone in to it went in to Escobera (a phenomenon common with Tuscan 2002s where the lesser appellations such as Rosso di Montalcino have benefited by incorporating fruit that might have gone into Brunello di Montalcino), which has just six months in used French and American oak. This wine tastes of fruit not oak.
Oddly enough the wine was shipped to Tuscany, Rossetti in Ceretto Guidi to be precise, to be bottled under the supervision of Antonini.
Even odder is that Booths, the northern English supermarket chain, has been selling this wine at £4.99 for months. Liberty then supplied me with the following list of independent stockists, saying the recommended retail price was at least £5.75. I queried this, pointing out that Booths were asking only £4.99. I went back to Booths and double checked that £4.99 was indeed their price. I queried the much higher price at the independents and the result, yesterday afternoon (Monday), was that Booths have increased their price to £5.49. So I would urge anyone interested in this wine and within reach of a Booth supermarket to go and buy it as soon as possible, before your local branch has got round to increasing the price.
UK stockists:
Harrods, London
Liberty Wines, London SW8 (mail order only)
Andrew Chapman Fine Wines, Abingdon
Wine Etcetera, Midhurst
Beer Ritz, Knaresborough and Headingly
Caisse de Vin, Cumnor, Oxon
Chippendale Fine Wines, Baildon, Shipley
Inspired Wines, Cleobury Mortimer
Moriarty Vintners, Cardiff
Ribblesdale Fine Wines, Clitheroe
Sommelier Wines, Guernsey
Valvona & Crolla, Edinburgh
Aitken Wines, Dundee
www.simplywines.ie, McCabes in Dublin and O'Donovans around Cork also sell the wine for around 10 euros. And it is currently available in through PrimeWine Sweden in Stockholm.
Those elsewhere are recommended to look out for the well-distributed wines of Casa de la Ermita which have a great track record and are similar (and similarly priced) if slightly earthier. See www.winesearcher.com for international stockists.
