Barato feast

Posted on 6 October 2011

I’m preparing a big article for my Polish blog on budget wines sourced not from supermarkets but from independent merchants. I’ve gone through 50 wines all costing 6.50€ or less on the shelf and unsurprisingly, Spain proved the most consistent source of good juice at those price points.

Castaño‘s basic 2010 Monastrell from Yecla in south-eastern Spain is bursting with ripe summer fruits with fantastic intensity and definition. The 2008 Piculia Toro from Valpiculata is a Tempranillo with nice freshness and directness, displaying the variety’s raspberry and black pepper without superfluous oak make-up. (And it has an impressively low 12.5% alc.). Even more surprising, the 2010 Finca Lasierpe Tempranillo-Garnacha from Navarra, usually a soulless commercial region I couldn’t care less about. This, instead, is brilliantly fresh and poised with succulent, natural-tasting fruit.

It just had me wondering why Spain doesn’t make more of its natural advantages. I almost never drink red Spanish wines at home because I can’t stand the overripe, overextracted, nastily oaky style of the majority of today’s Riberas, Toros, Navarras and La Manchas. Here I focused on entry-level wines retailing around 5€ in Spain that by definition are light and simple. Bu spend 2 or 3€ more and you enter into the dreaded Roble or Crianza category where American oak rules supreme and where the wines become tooth-staining, mind-dumbing, undrinkable fruit soups. I want to drink more wines like this delicious Lasierpe but also want a guarantee of freshness and drinkability. So I’ll be petitioning for the “No Roble” to become an official category.

Disclosure

All the wines mentioned here were my own purchases.