Jasmine Heinen writes my name is Jasmine Heinen, and I’ve recently completed my WSET Diploma. After a 10 year career in finance, I’ve just left the industry to work in the wine world, and am currently working on a vineyard in Champagne. I’m hoping to start my own winery in the future
The Golden Nectar
As with many of my food and wine experiences in my early and mid- 20s, this one started with a voucher. I wasn’t much of a wine drinker at the time – or at least not one with a noteworthy sense of what was good. I had just moved in next door to a trendy London wine bar, and wanted to show it off to a friend. We were given a voucher for a free glass of wine at their newly opened restaurant in the area. Three days later I went there to cash it in.
This was at a time when wine lists still seemed like they were written in another language. An unnecessarily long and seemingly unconnected collection of dates, names, regions – almost certainly randomly assorted for the sole purpose of creating confusion. Concerned primarily with making sure whatever I ordered qualified as the “free glass”, I asked for a white wine, to go with the warm August weather, which was as far as my pairing standard extended 10 years ago. The waiter (Or was he a sommelier? How to tell the difference?) suggested something, and I, feigning some sort of recognition of the suggestion, nodded in approval.
When the glass arrived, everything changed.
First, the colour – it was both brighter and darker than I expected. Almost golden. What made it so? Then the smell. It was nutty and floral at the same time. I clumsily swirled it, and as the wine splashed dangerously from side to side (you don’t waste a free drink!), aromas I’d never smelled– and definitely never expected – emerged. Stewed apples. Hay. The aromas that only extensive oxidative ageing can create. I know this now, because I’ve had this wine dozens of times, but on that night – they were just… unusual. I tasted it, and it didn’t make sense. It tasted old and new at the same time, so intense but still so delicate.
When I woke up the next morning, I couldn’t get it out of my mind. It was like a new crush, a really good date, or a particularly good kiss that you still feel somewhere deep in your gut long after it has ended. It just kind of stuck with me. So I did something I’d never done before – I emailed the restaurant and asked them to give me all the details of the wine. Then I ordered a case of it, and a mix of other wines from the same producer, fascinated by the magician behind the golden nectar I had tasted and couldn’t get out of my head.
I recently dug out that email. As occasionally happens with great passions, sometimes you misremember the details. For years I was convinced the wine that made me fall in love was Lopez de Heredia’s Tondonia Blanco, but it was actually the Gravonia. The Tondonia is undeniably superior, but both are truly amazing wines.
Since then, I’ve spent hundreds of hours at WSET classes, and I’ve tasted thousands of wines from around the globe. I’ve travelled the world to visit far off wineries in search of cult wines, new wines, old wines and sometimes simple wines. I’ve learned that tasting is both a science and an art. There is qualitative analysis to it – is it balanced, is the acidity level right, where does the grape end and the winemaking begin? But there is also a personal aspect to it. How does it make you feel? What makes it shines and what dulls it.
Years later, that perfect integration of the old and the new is still my favourite characteristic in a wine. It’s that special flavour that allows you to taste development that can only occur with age. It demands patience. For me it’s like looking at the childhood portrait of someone you know as an adult. That youth still exists, and that innocence is in there somewhere, but the person has grown and evolved and is now more complex with lines and scars and changed features that reflect the experiences they have had. Still beneath it all, the original sparkle in their eye or shape of their smile is there, just as the freshness of the fruit remains and the original aromas of the grape and terroir.
Despite the love at first taste, I can’t say the Gravonia (or Tondonia) is my “favourite” wine in the world – at least not anymore. I’ve been exposed to so much in the meantime, it would feel enormously limiting if the best wine was the first one I truly tasted. Still, Lopez de it will always be the one that set me on my way. It is the wine I yearn for when I’m having a particularly bad day, but also the one I look forward to when I have something to celebrate. It’s a wine that I drink as an aperitif, but also pair with endless foods. I both collect it as a treasure, and drink it freely, as if it could never run out.
Several years after I fell in love with the wines, Lopez de Heredia’s whites started to be heralded in all sorts of wine publications. The wine became rarer and more expensive – these days you’d be lucky to find a bottle. I’ve tried to visit the winery in Haro on three separate occasions. It’s never possible. A part of me hopes it stays that way. Some dreams should remain just that – an unattainable longing, that gives you something to hope for.
