Again I’m clearly a day late here with my verdict. Busy weekend of my cricket club pub crawl (although half the usual pubs had gone out of business, sad times!), the subsequent hangover, and then a catch up with a great mate from Oslo that…er…got out of hand a bit left me nursing a glass …
Rioja is one of those words in the wine industry now that, for most people, means a certain thing. It’s almost like a brand name. Red wine from Spain. Wine-o’s will not enjoy me saying that, but they’ll understand what I’m saying, and know for most people on the planet that that’s true.
I’m still struggling to say “Spanish Rosé”. It’s kind of like saying “british sausages”, and my experiences of the three rosés I drank this weekend were as far different as cumberland and black pudding. Having said that, compared to the sad continental crap you get at holiday breakfast buffets (still on sausages here sorry), they …
I said in the last post that the rosés made from the bleeding process tend to be that little bit more “meaty” than others. Sounds a bit of a funny way of describing a wine doesn’t it? So I guess I need to explain what I meant by that and how you’re going to see …
Portuguese grape varieties can be really confusing, and in all fairness, I wouldn’t even begin to suggest you look to know them all. One of the biggest the problems is that the names tend to be interchangeable. Tempranillo in Spain (and in pretty much everywhere else in the world) is known as Tinta Roriz in …
I love drinking Port. I first starting drinking it at the last hockey match before christmas, in the in-goal half time team talk. To be fair, that was probably the old supermarket’s value own brand, but luckily over the years I’ve managed to try lots of different examples, and I’ve really loved them. If you’ve …
Notes on Northern Spain #3: One For The Heavy Red Drinkers Read More »
Navarre is Rioja’s next door neighbour. It has a history of making rosés from the Garnacha grape we spoke about last time. Problem for years was that there wasn’t all that much care and attention paid, they were a bit too alcoholic and often too oxidised. What do I mean by that? Well, believe it …
Notes on Northern Spain ♯2: Every Rosé Has A Thorn Read More »
Spain is an absolutely vast country, well, in European terms anyway. (As far as I’m concerned any country you can’t drive from one side to the other in a day is massive!) And in keeping with that, there’s no way off the back of one blog I can start explaining Spanish wines. So Northern Spain …
or The Trip To San Sebastian In terms of languages, I’d like to think I buck the usual stereotype of the Brit abroad. Like most, I did a bit of French and German when I was at school, so can fudge my way through there. My parents have a little place in northern Italy, so …
