The Wines of Utiel-Requena

Somewhere near Darlington, as the 'quieter coach' began to fill up with youngsters who used the word like a lot, I asked myself if the train journey south was really worth it. It ultimately took six hours and two changes to reach Kings Cross. When I arrived I hit the nearest pub and drained a bottle of Fuller's London Porter as if my life depended on it.

 

London, on a fine day in March

I'm very interested in Spanish wine, though, so the prospect of learning about Utiel-Requena, a little-known region, appealed to me. I have a number of people and businesses to thank for this enthusiasm: my uncle, for introducing me to sherry; Majestic Wine, for sending me to Rioja; Ramón Bilbao, for holding its Spanish Wine Master competition two years ago.

 

Utiel-Requena is inland from Valencia in eastern Spain. Rather incredibly, it turns out that the United Kingdom is the top export market for this D.O.'s wines. In my experience it's rare to find a customer who's heard of Jumilla, let alone Utiel-Requena. As a speaker at the tasting in London pointed out, however, a supermarket here stocks a dirt-cheap wine from the area, which no doubt goes some way to explaining this apparent anomaly. Patricia Álvarez of Coviñas, the biggest cooperative in the region, remarked that many drinkers will be 'unaware' that they are consuming a wine from this part of Spain.

 

It's somewhat more likely that wine drinkers will have heard of the grape Bobal, which accounts for about two thirds of plantings in Utiel-Requena. Still, it's not exactly a household name. Bobal is used to make reds and trendy rosados which have very little colour. The reds might be blended with Tempranillo, Garnacha or French varietals like Merlot, Syrah and Cabernet Sauvignon, but it's often bottled on its own. The classic flavour of Bobal, I was told, is raspberry, and wines made from very old vines can have a liquorice character.

 

Bobal and Cabernet Sauvignon seem like odd bedfellows to me. Its thick skins give Bobal plenty of tannin, and it has a nice streak of acidity and plenty of body as well. Like Cabernet, then, it's not lacking structure, so why blend them? Tempranillo, the Spanish superstar grape, is a more logical partner because of its low acidity, and it has the advantage of being easy to grow. 

 

Given the heat and arid nature of the climate (less than 300mm of rain fell in 2024), it's a little surprising that about a quarter of the wine sold from the D.O. is white. The white grapes in Utiel-Requena benefit from elevation, with vineyards planted between about 650 and 900 metres above sea level. Aromatic whites are made from a grape called Tardana, which is indigenous to the area. Remarkably, it is the last grape to be picked at Coviñas, at the end of October or even in November. It has lovely aromas of tropical fruit and citrus.

 

The principal white grape is Macabeo. Best known for its role in Cava and white Rioja, I discovered that it is originally from the vast area of La Mancha, to the west. As Sébastien Richard of Sierra Norte observed, Macabeo is often considered to be 'quite neutral'. Some skin contact makes a big difference, he continued, resulting in more floral wines. Disappointingly, that's a tasting note I can almost never pick up, unless it's a Gewurztraminer.

 

Curiously, Albariño and Godello have migrated south from Galicia and are present in Utiel-Requena, where they seem thoroughly out of place, at least to me. Apparently, Godello suffers more than its fellow Galician varietal from the lack of rain. Albariño manages to retain its high acidity, which was also true of the Sauvignon Blancs I sampled. Chardonnay is also present, in fact it's the second most prevalent white grape. Needless to say, it's useful in the local Cavas, adding a creamy texture.

 

Utiel-Requena has some things going for it. The wines are good and shockingly cheap, and it's a hotbed of organic viticulture. It may sound laughable, but I think the main challenge it faces is not drought, but its name. Utiel-Requena really is a bit of a mouthful. That said, if Montepulciano can achieve name recognition among Brits, there's hope for this this Spanish D.O. too.

 

Cairanne

             Several months ago I spent about forty pounds on a bottle of Guigal's Châteauneuf du Pape blanc. I almost never spend that much on a bottle of wine, especially a white, so I had to ask myself: what was I thinking? Well, the fact is that I have a soft spot for the whites of that region.

 

Before I entered the wine trade, I took a backpack to the southern Rhône. I had already developed a liking for the area’s powerful and intoxicating red wines, so I decided to spend some time there, relying on public transport and my own two feet. It was high summer and the weather was glorious.

 

After visiting the attractive hillside wine village of Séguret, I walked several miles across the plain to my destination, Rasteau, in the middle of a roasting August afternoon. My route was complicated by the presence of the River Ouvèze, so I ended up going the long way via Roaix, a Côtes du Rhône named village which you almost never see on a label, at least in the U.K. I wrote the following in my notebook after that crazy trek:

 

Walk from Séguret to Roaix intolerable. Heat appalling, barely a breath of wind. Vines stretch across the flat land; gobelet, wires. Lots of canopy, big bunches of grapes. Hotel guy told me it hadn’t rained for two weeks; previous downpour was a violent thunderstorm.

 

Sweating buckets, I stopped at a roadside inn outside Roaix. It might have been wiser to order a Perrier or a Badoit, but I opted for a glass of 'vin blanc' instead. I don’t remember what it was, probably a Côtes du Rhône, but that was my memorable introduction to the whites of the southern Rhône.

 

After reaching my destination, I discovered that white AOC Rasteau was not a thing, that honour being reserved for Grenache-heavy reds and Vins Doux Naturel. Neighbouring Cairanne made whites, though, so I decided to go there. 

 

I recommend that any energetic lover of wines from the southern Rhône should undertake the walk between those two villages. You ascend a hill behind Rasteau, past row upon stony row of vines. Eventually you reach the top of ‘La Montagne’, which is actually only about 350 metres high, from which point you can see the ‘vieux village’ of Cairanne on a nearby hilltop. It’s a lovely walk, and if you undertake it in August when all the farmers are on holiday, the only sounds you’ll hear will be from cicadas, mosquitos and the occasional passing helicopter.

Cairanne

 

I got chatting to a wine merchant in the modern part of Cairanne, below the old hilltop village. White wine, he told me, was more important than red before phylloxera. Not anymore, of course! Still, whites are taken seriously in Cairanne, whose wines apparently have more acidity than those made in neighbouring villages. When I asked why this should be, I was given the rather enigmatic explanation that the soil and ‘terroir’ were responsible. I say enigmatic, because the soil and terroir seemed very similar to Rasteau’s to me: marl, clay, sand, an abundance of stones, all in a very warm and dry climate.

 

        I was curious about the grapes used in the blend, for they were not exactly household words, at least to an inexperienced British drinker. Grenache Blanc, he told me, was neutral, but had body. Bourboulenc was also quite neutral, but brought acidity, a rare thing in the southern Rhône. The flavour came from Clairette, which now has the caché of being the principal grape used in white Gigondas. For some reason, Roussanne didn’t merit a mention, perhaps because it was originally from the northern Rhône! At the time, I had little familiarity with these varietals, so I was fascinated.

 

I never made it to Châteauneuf du Pape, unfortunately. It turned out that the southern Rhône shares one of the U.K.’s deficiencies: you can’t rely on local buses. As for why I’m keen on whites from Cairanne, Lirac, Vacqueyras and so on, I think I have to acknowledge that, most importantly, they remind me of that beautiful region. I might even drink a rosé from there.

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The Wines of Washington State

   

          My American stepfather is ninety-three years old. Not surprisingly, he says he has ‘done a lot’ in his lifetime. This includes visiting forty six of the fifty states in the U.S.A., the exceptions being North Dakota (‘boring’), Colorado, and the two states in the Pacific Northwest, Oregon and Washington (‘no reason to go’).

 

          Needless to say, he’s not a wine drinker. Indeed, before I brought up the topic he had no idea that Oregon and Washington even had vineyards. As someone who avoids Pinot Noir, I share his lack of excitement about Oregon. Washington, though, is another matter, which explains why I travelled several hundred miles to attend a tasting in London.

 

          I warmed up for my journey south by drinking several bottles from this unheralded part of America, which I obtained in the Great Wine Co.’s stellar January sale. One was the 2018 Eroica XLC Dry Riesling from Chateau Ste. Michelle, Washington’s leading producer.

 

      The lack of familiarity with Washington hit home when a colleague asked if I knew they grew Riesling there before my purchase. (Yes, I did.) Anyway, the wine was off-dry with a lovely honeyed flavour, an endless finish, and the grape’s trademark crazy acidity.

 

          The vineyards in Washington are planted on a huge swathe of parched land in the east of the state. Rainfall is so low that irrigation from the broad Columbia River is essential. It’s very continental: hot (100 degrees fahrenheit, or about 38 degrees celsius, is common in July) and exceptionally sunny in the summer, but frigid in the long winters. I was told at the London tasting, for example, that in 2022 there was still a foot of snow on the ground in April.

 

        Unusually, Washington is phylloxera-free, owing to the freezing winters and sandy soil, and disease pressure is very low. Still, vintage variation is a real issue. 2011 was so cold that the Cabernet Sauvignon wasn’t harvested until November at l’Ecole No. 41 winery in Walla Walla AVA (American Viticultural Area), which extends across the state line into Oregon.

 

          Two grapes stood out for me at the showcase, Merlot (muh-LOW in American parlance) and Chardonnay. As Ryan Pennington of l’Ecole No. 41 Winery put it, Washington is 'one of the great places in the world to grow Merlot’. The Merlots I tried were indeed outstanding, with a heady aroma of blackcurrants, very soft tannins and ample body.

 

         Horse Heaven Hills AVA, a windy area where the heat is moderated by the Columbia River, is ‘where Merlot kicks ass’, according to a representative of Chateau Ste. Michelle. Throughout the state, the Merlot benefits from the fact that the temperature falls off a cliff when the sun goes down in the summer, helping the grapes to retain acid. In August, the diurnal variation can be as much as 40 degrees fahrenheit.

          Merlot is, I think, superior to Cabernet Sauvignon in Washington, which can be very tannic and austere, at least when young (the oldest vintage I tried was 2020). A lot more Cabernet is present in the vineyards, though, as the sought-after grapes carry a higher price. I can say that Washington Merlot does age very well, for I had Chateau Ste. Michelle's sublime 2016 Canoe Ridge Merlot, from Horse Heaven Hills AVA, before going south. 

 

          Chardonnay, the second most prevalent grape after Cabernet Sauvignon, was the other varietal which really made an impression on me in London. The fruit is grown in cooler AVAs like Yakima Valley and Ancient Lakes (the wine regions in Washington have really evocative names). The latter is both further north than most of the state’s best-known vineyard zones, and the soils have a higher calcium content, making it a good spot for Chardonnay. The ones I sampled had a lovely rich mouthfeel and a delicious pear flavour.

 

          I only had a few wines from Oregon in London, although many were available to try. In my opinion, the most interesting thing about ‘The Beaver State’ is that it’s where D. B. Cooper boarded a plane in 1971. As for the wines, they are expensive and you have to really love Pinot Noir, which occupies about 60 percent of the vineyard area. 

 

          I imagine that, like my stepfather, I will never set foot in Washington. It’s very far away and I’d be reluctant to subject myself once again to the American airport experience (long ago I spent a night of despair in Newark Airport). There’s something about the place that will probably always appeal, though. It’s not just the excellent wines, it’s also the thought of a daily dose of sixteen or seventeen hours of warm sunshine in the summer. When you live in Scotland, that’s not to be sniffed at.

           Published in The Wine Merchant, April 2025. 

Campania

           I have been to a few weddings outside the U.K. The first was in San Francisco, twenty years ago. It was a small affair in a lovely hotel downtown. I remember that an American guest referred to me as a ‘ne’er-do-well’, which I considered particularly harsh as I was helping to foot the bill for the festivities!

          Many years later, I went to another wedding in Campania, the reception for which was held in a winery. Here I was merely a guest and my presence was very welcome, for I had helped the Italian couple to discover the venue the previous year.

That was my first visit to the interior of Campania. I was already a big fan of the Aglianico grape and I had asked my Italian friend Davide if we could visit the area where the vineyards were located and Taurasi was made. I couldn’t quite believe my eyes as he drove us from the coast into the mountainous interior, where the temperature plunged by about ten degrees compared to sunny Salerno. When I was told later that spring frosts were an issue at the estate, I was not at all surprised.

When we reached the winery, we found that it was perched above a valley with a dramatic mountain in the background. Vines bearing the white grape Fiano spread down the slope in front of us. Fiano, I learned, was the first of the big name grapes to be harvested. The owner observed that it was more aromatic than Greco, the other white Campanian grape with DOCG status, giving wines with a citrus and white fruit character, and was still good twenty years after the harvest. As was the case with the other whites made at the estate, they preferred not to mature the Fiano in oak.

Despite the fact that I was a devotee of red wine, I was very interested to learn about the white grapes of Campania. They all had high acidity, I was informed. According to my notes, the Greco we tasted was full-bodied and mineral, with a tinge of grapefruit. It was outstanding. (I can’t recall if that was my judgement or the owner’s – perhaps both!) The downsides were that it gave low yields and was hard to grow.

          The main draw for me was of course the red wines made from Aglianico. I discovered that the harvest for this grape could extend into November, which probably explains why the one Sicilian Aglianico I have tried in the U.K. was awful. Evidently the grape needs the altitude and continental climate of inland Campania, where vines are planted between 300 and 650 metres above sea level and the diurnal variation can be as much as 18 degrees in the summer, if it is to ripen properly.

          I’d already had a lot of Aglianico by that point in my life, and my conclusions were confirmed by the owner of the estate. It was a food wine, he said, owing to its high tannins and searing acidity, with flavours of cherry, strawberry and blueberry. It was also very ageworthy, he continued. He lamented, however, that Taurasi was not an easy sell, owing to a lack of name recognition and the high cost of production, the latter challenge reflecting the terrain and the remoteness of the vineyards. Still, relative to other excellent wines from Italy, I’d say the cost of a bottle of Taurasi really isn’t prohibitive.

          To return to my friend’s wedding, the final part of the reception unfolded in the fermentation room. We ate cheese accompanied by the winery’s Taurasi, danced in front of the towering steel fermentation vats, and had Fernet Branca as a digestivo. As we departed, each guest was handed a bottle of Aglianico, which we’d already consumed great quantities of over dinner.

          I briefly flirted with learning Italian after that wedding, but gave up when I kept confusing it with Spanish and French. One thing is for sure, though: I will remember the Italian toast brindisi for the rest of my life. 

             Published in The Wine Merchant, March 2025. 

 

Wines of Austria

       The view from the rooftop terrace above the National Museum of Scotland is special. Within throwing distance to the west is Greyfriars Kirkyard, whose green lawns and sandy-coloured church stand out among the dark and gloomy buildings of the city’s Old Town. To the north, the famous castle sits on its rocky perch like a sentry, and you can make out tiny figures on the esplanade preparing to head through the dark arch and into its precincts.

          Towards the end of the year, I had the chance to enjoy this fine prospect thanks to my interest in Austrian wine. Before Covid, I had been to one previous masterclass in this splendid venue, when attendees were given the opportunity to taste thirty wines from Ribera del Duero. Twenty nine were full throttle reds, showcasing the tannic delights of Tinta del País. (A friend commented afterwards that he at last understood the meaning of the term palate fatigue.) A solitary rosado served as an exception. It reminded me of the time I went to a wine tasting in Gigondas, where the rosés seemed an afterthought, almost an embarrassment.

 

        No whites were available at either of those tastings, whereas they were very much the showstoppers at the Austrian wine event in Edinburgh. One of the best was a Riesling from the noted vineyard of Achleiten in Wachau (Domäne Wachau, Riesling Smaragd Ried Achleiten, 2021), where vines are planted on terraces above the River Danube. 

 

     Riesling is, perhaps surprisingly, a bit player in Austria, accounting for under five percent of the total vineyard area. It is reserved for stony soils which don’t suit Grüner Veltliner. As this Smaragd showed, however, it can be seriously good, and the best have the potential to last fifty years. I suggested to our host, a Master of Wine, that it had a late harvest character. She did not agree! According to her, it bore the hallmark apricot flavour of the Wachau and, upon retrying the wine, I had to acknowledge that she was absolutely right.

 

        While I drink more red than white wine, my preference is beginning to swing the other way. I was therefore excited to try a Gemischter Satz at the masterclass (Christ, Bisamberg Wiener Gemischter Satz, 2023), for I don’t think I’d ever had this Viennese specialty before. A field blend comprising many grapes, the aroma brought to mind a chewing gum I used to have on holiday in the south of France when I was a boy (my father would only go on holiday in France). I think it was the peach variety, but I could well be wrong, given that several decades have elapsed since then. At any rate, the wine was genuinely full-bodied and delicious. 

 

        Needless to say, the heavy hitter of Austrian wine is Grüner Veltliner, which occupies about a third of the country’s vineyard area. We tasted three of those and one, made from grapes grown in the Kremstal, whose loess soils are particularly well-suited to the grape, was spectacular (Wess, Krems 'Alte Reben' Grüner Veltliner, 2022). It was made using old vines (‘alte reben’), some of which were planted over 100 years ago.

 

   There was also a lovely oak-aged Sauvignon Blanc (Neumeister, Vulkanland Steiermark Sauvignon Blanc, Grosse STK Ried Moarfeitl, 2017) from the southern region of Styria, the ‘green heart of Austria’, according to the MW. Here grapes are grown at altitude and the climate is marginal; it gave the lie to the claim that Sauvignon is not suitable for ageing. 

 

        The one sparkling wine we sampled, a dry pet-nat from a producer in Burgenland on the Hungarian border (Pittnauer, 'Pitt Nat' Blanc, 2022), proved controversial. My friend and colleague was of the view that it smelled ‘like industrial waste’, and he considered the palate to be only ‘marginally better’. The Master of Wine felt it had a ‘yeasty, earthy’ character. I agreed that it was very aromatic, but in a good way!

 

This event was truly memorable, and it was a pity that the total attendance amounted to a mere seven people. My colleague left with nine free bottles of really good wine, despite informing our hosts that he felt the country still suffered from an image problem with British wine drinkers, owing to the antifreeze scandal in the 1980s. Still, as he put it, people appreciate honesty! 

Published in The Wine Merchant, February 2025.

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Montes Alpha

           One of the great things about wine is the way it can transport you back to the past.

I had this experience recently when a friend and I shared a bottle of Bodegas Zugober’s Belezos Rioja Gran Reserva 2013. We pulled the cork on it, poured out a couple of glasses and had a sniff. It was such a pleasure that I almost started laughing, and it was supposedly a mediocre vintage!

It took me back almost three decades to my teenage years in the south of England. At the time I was a smoker – a minor act of rebellion, against nobody in particular – and I had a penchant for a brand of French cigarettes called Gitanes. The packaging was of unmatched brilliance, a long white box with a wispy image of a woman shrouded by smoke on the blue sleeve.

I asked my drinking partner, who had never indulged in the joy of smoking, if he detected the whiff of tobacco on the nose. My question was met with a rueful shake of the head. But to me it was overpowering. It was so good that I almost went for a walk around Edinburgh in search of this majestic French product, and I don’t even smoke anymore. I consoled myself by smelling a cigar for a couple of hours.

Sometime later, in a cupboard, I came across my old Little Black Journal of Wine, which many years ago travelled to the other side of the world with me. I would scrawl tasting notes in here while a student. I quickly tracked down the entry for what was once my favourite wine, the Montes Alpha Cabernet Sauvignon from Colchagua Valley in Chile.

I used to frequently buy this wine from my local supermarket in Tokyo, whose buyer clearly had impeccable taste. There was a specialist wine shop over the level crossing, but I was deterred by the fact that every single bottle came in cellophane wrap, gifting being a big thing in Japan. Also, they didn’t have the Montes Alpha. I would drink it out of a plastic mug in my minuscule apartment, and it tasted fabulous. (When I mentioned to a friend back home that I drank a Barbaresco from this cup, he was appalled).

My tasting note was thorough, reflecting the fact that I was studying for the WSET Diploma in my spare time. It was also prosaic: blackcurrant, mint, coffee, chocolate, herbaceous (green pepper). I reckon I was stretching things with the coffee and chocolate, and I was definitely way off when I wrote that there was high acidity, but I was pleased to see I hadn’t felt the urge to employ the dreaded term ‘complex’.

I remember feeling that I hadn’t quite done the wine justice, though, except by drinking a lot of it. There was another flavour, which I just couldn’t put my finger on. It would take another five years or so before I finally worked out what it was.

One spring afternoon my wife and I drove into the Scottish Borders to Abbotsford House, which was once the home of the legendary Scottish writer Sir Walter Scott. In the period since our previous visit, a café had been constructed. We sat upstairs and ordered a slice of blueberry cheesecake. I felt a little thrill as I tasted it, for it transported me back to that tiny flat down a narrow alley in Japan. This was the missing flavour, blueberry cheesecake!

I’ve had many bottles of the Montes Alpha Cabernet since returning to the U.K., but none have seemed to quite match the one I had in Tokyo, which was the 2013 vintage. Maybe it was a great year after all.

Published in The Wine Merchant, November 2024.