Spanish Grape Varieties: A Photographic Encyclopedia (A Work-in-Progress, More to Come)

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(Double click on image to go to larger image, once in Picasa web album push F11 for full screen view.)

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About Gerry Dawes

Gerry Dawes's Spain: An Insider's Guide to Spanish Food, Wine, Culture and Travel


Gerry Dawes was awarded Spain's prestigious Premio Nacional de Gastronomía (National Gastronomy Award) in 2003. He writes and speaks frequently on Spanish wine and gastronomy and leads gastronomy, wine and cultural tours to Spain. He was a finalist for the 2001 James Beard Foundation's Journalism Award for Best Magazine Writing on Wine, won The Cava Institute's First Prize for Journalism for his article on cava in 2004, was awarded the CineGourLand “Cinéfilos y Gourmets” (Cinephiles & Gourmets) prize in 2009 in Getxo (Vizcaya) and received the 2009 Association of Food Journalists Second Prize for Best Food Feature in a Magazine for his Food Arts article, a retrospective piece about Catalan star chef, Ferran Adrià.

In December, 2009, Dawes was awarded the Food Arts Silver Spoon Award in a profile written by José Andrés.

". . .That we were the first to introduce American readers to Ferran Adrià in 1997 and have ever since continued to bring you a blow-by-blow narrative of Spain's riveting ferment is chiefly due to our Spanish correspondent, Gerry "Mr. Spain" Dawes, the messianic wine and food journalist raised in Southern Illinois and possessor of a self-accumulated doctorate in the Spanish table. Gerry once again brings us up to the very minute. . ." - - Michael & Ariane Batterberry, Editor-in-Chief/Publisher and Founding Editor/Publisher, Food Arts, October 2009. 

Mr. Dawes is currently working on a reality television series 
on wine, gastronomy, culture and travel in Spain.

Experience Spain With Gerry Dawes: Customized Culinary, Wine & Cultural Trips to Spain; Travel Consulting on Spain

Gerry Dawes can be reached at gerrydawes@aol.com; Alternate e-mail (use only if your e-mail to AOL is rejected): gerrydawes@gmail.com

World Wine Crisis (Three): Jaime Goode's Blog "I would say that Winefuture is about the old wine industry".

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Very Interesting post about WineFuture-Rioja 2009 by Jamie Goode on his Blog

"The much talked-about 'Wine Future' conference is taking place in Spain later this week. I'm not going (although I probably would have gone had I been invited, even if it was out of morbid curiousity).

There's a glittering speaker list, and it will draw a significant crowd of important people, but I feel lukewarm to the whole idea.

I don't think the future of the wine industry will be determined top-down by the famous people who currently 'lead' the wine industry.

Instead, I think it will come from an under-the-radar movement of dedicated winegrowers who are prepared to understand the vineyards they work with and make interesting, authentic, characterful wines.

Very few of these winegrowers would be at all interested in a conference like this. They make wine not because they want to make money, but because they have to. These new great wines are made by people who see winegrowing as their vocation. Their focus starts in the vineyard and they work as naturally as possible. Typically, they prefer large oak to small, old oak to new, and concrete to stainless steel.

Instead, I think it will come from an under-the-radar movement of dedicated winegrowers who are prepared to understand the vineyards they work with and make interesting, authentic, characterful wines.

Very few of these winegrowers would be at all interested in a conference like this. They make wine not because they want to make money, but because they have to. These new great wines are made by people who see winegrowing as their vocation. Their focus starts in the vineyard and they work as naturally as possible. Typically, they prefer large oak to small, old oak to new, and concrete to stainless steel.

If I am allowed to be provocative, I would say that Winefuture is about the old wine industry. The new wine industry will emerge from the corpse of the old industry. The secret revolution is underway."

 

With answers from Jim Budd, my self and a wine grower named Fabius.   

At 5:07 PM,  Jim Budd said... 

 

Justin is quite right to highlight the questions that hang over Pancho Campo MW and his Wine Academy of Spain. For more than a month I have been asking him a series of question about his conviction for fraud in Dubai, how he got out before the trial and whether any of the money (640,000€) involved in the conviction was used to set up The Wine Academy of Spain. Campo left Dubai in 2003 and set up the Academy the same year. To date I have had no response to my questions. Pancho Campo was due to speak at the recent European Wine Bloggers Conference but failed to show. Avoiding answering legitimate questions? No-one appears to know whether The Wine Academy of Spain, the owner and organiser of WineFuture Rioja09 was funded, wholly or in part, on the proceeds of fraud. The distinguished speakers and sponsors appear not to care. Various posting can be found on Jim's Loire including this one: http://jimsloire.blogspot.com/2009/10/pancho-campo-mw-essence.html  

 

 At 5:28 PM,  Gerry Dawes said... 

 

More frightening while this WF-Rioja 09 conference is going on (it reminds me of elephants coming home to the graveyard) is the questions of thousands of tons of grapes left on the ground this year, the growers in tractor brigades rolling into provincial capitals to protest low grape prices, Diageo's dumping of cru classe Bordeaux, Constellation's reported selling off of a 164-year old Australian vineyard where a complex of small apartments is planned, etc.    This conference purports to enlighten attendees on how to "market" wines in this climate is really like Nero fiddling while Rome burns. And there are several potential performers in this affair auditioning for the role of Nero.    (I also highly recommend that you watch the Zev Robinson trailer for his film, Bobal & Other Wine Stories, which is really a Grapes of Wrath saga about the struggles of Bobal grape growers in Utiel-Requena. [See the Zeb Robinson article on my blog for a link to the trailer.)  

 

At 6:42 PM,  Fabius said... 

 

As a (very) small producer of quality wines made from our own grapes grown in our own vineyard, what our great leaders say or do at WF is of absolutely no significance to us. The wine industry today is in a huge mess (of said leaders' own making, I might add) what with oversupply and falling consumption in most markets. Anyway, we are focussed on quality, terroir, etc and our niche market, even though tiny for the big boys, is enormous for us. We are passionate about what we do and are going to do it no matter what!!!

 About the author

Gerry Dawes was awarded Spain's prestigious Premio Nacional de Gastronomía (National Gastronomy Award) in 2003. He writes and speaks frequently on Spanish wine and gastronomy and leads gastronomy, wine and cultural tours to Spain. He was a finalist for the 2001 James Beard Foundation's Journalism Award for Best Magazine Writing on Wine, won The Cava Institute's First Prize for Journalism for his article on cava in 2004, was awarded the CineGourLand prize in 2009 and received the Association of Food Journalists 2009 Second Prize for Best Food Feature in a Magazine for his Food Arts article, a retrospective piece about Catalan star chef, Ferran Adrià.

Mr. Dawes is currently working on a reality television

series on wine, gastronomy, culture and travel in Spain.

Experience Spain With Gerry Dawes: Culinary Trips to Spain & Travel Consulting on Spain

Gerry Dawes can be reached at gerrydawes@aol.com; Alternate e-mail (use only if your e-mail to AOL is rejected): gerrydawes@gmail.com

World Wine Crisis, Part One: La Bobal Y Other Stories About Wine: A Film by Zev Robinson (With a modern-day Grapes of Wrath social commentary)

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On Wednesday night, November 4, at the Gabarron Foundation carriage house space on E. 38th Street in Manhattan, I  saw a remarkable film, La Bobal Y Otras Historias del Vino by Zev Robinson, ostensibly on the Bobal grape in La Comunitat Valenciana's Utiel Requena region.  

I went expecting to learn more about the this thick-skinned, dark purple wine-producing grape, but was astounded instead by the film's back story, the "Other Stories of Wine," in which many long time grape growers with a passion for their land are facing the very sad prospect of losing everything.  Many of the scenes tug at the heart strings and, just a little over a year into what more and more looks like a Depression, things will probably only get worse. 

Documentary - La Bobal y otras historias del vino (La Bobal and other stories about wine) Zev Robinson on Vimeo.

La Bobal is a modern day Grapes of Wrath-like social commentary that is ostensibly about the Bobal grape, but more about  how the people who grow that grape--once used for blending to make bulk wines for northern Europe--can no longer afford to grow grapes and are trying to make a silk purse out of a sow's ear.  

In Zev Robinson's film, there is lots of talk about converting to produce "quality" wines from the big, thick-skinned grape Bobal, a grape that was used to provide alcohol and color for train tankloads of bulk wines that were shipped from La Grao, the port of Valencia, where large warehouses that once held huge quantities of wine awaiting shipment were recently covered into hangars to house the sailing vessels that competed in the last edition of the America's Cup. 

There were many memorable scenes in La Bobal, which I will report more on later when I have a chance to go back over the film (Zev gave me a copy).  One of the most striking statements was made by a grape grower who was talking about being paid more money for high alcohol content potential in their grapes, less for lower potential. The irony is that no one mentioned that this high alcohol incentive is still being done at a time when people are rebelling against heavy wines with high alcohol.

Utiel-Requena, 90% of which is planted in Bobal, has some 35,000 hectares of this grape (more than double the amount of land under vine in Navarra, for instance, and almost double that of the Ribera del Duero).  Apart from producing oceans of bulk wine for years, the region made (and still does make) some delicious Bobal-based rosados at 12% and, during the last decade they have gone to phasing out bulk wines and making more of the modern vino tinto blends, some with Bobal, but many with Tempranillo, Cabernet Sauvignon and Syrah, which puts them in a massive competitive pool of similar wines made by bodegas from all over Spain, many of which have struggled and are now struggling even more to find buyers.

 

Bruno Murciano, Spain's sommelier of the year in 2008, who is from this region, is shown lamenting the fact that per capita consumption has fallen dramatically and people are drinking more beer and internationally marketed drinks like Coca-Cola when they used to come into his parent's bar-restaurante and have a glass of wine.
 

The very sincere sounding Bruno Murciano is the same young man chosen by Pancho Campo as the head sommelier at Parker's Garnacha tasting in La Rioja at WinePast-Aragón 1899* on November 12 & 13, where only two Rioja wines were put in after immense pressure on Campo and tractor brigades are being organized for a grape price protest invasion on Logroño (and are being planned for Madrid from not just Rioja, but other regions around Spain), milliones of kilos of grapes were left on the ground during this harvest and many farmers are facing ruin.   

I hasten to add that Burno Murciano is not to blame for this Garnacha fiasco in La Rioja, but the irony of Murciano's poignant lament about the diminution of per capita sales of wine in Spain as scenes of his family's modest restaurant in Utiel-Requena are shown in the film is notable.

*(What some wags, including this one, are calling Pancho Campo's WineFuture-Rioja 2009 conference, whose most celebrated tasting will be conducting featuring Garnacha wines, several of which come from Aragón and Catalunya none of which were programmed to be from La Rioja, which is famous for Tempranillo-based wines.)

Robinson filmed Pancho Campo's presentation at Fenavin this year, in which he told the attendees that Spain needed to conolidate efforts more like Constellation has (and by extension the big boys who support his "Spanish wine education" diploma mills and conferences) and at one point suggests that wine is missing  an opportunity for selling wine in places like Burger King.

Pancho Campo's Wine Future presentation (in Spanish), pt 2 from Zev Robinson on Vimeo.

With the worldwide Grapes of Wrath catastrophe that is descending on the wine world everywhere from Australia to Spain, we now see the long term effects not just of the economy, but of Parkerista style wines and government-subsidized programs to produce and sell wines that there was no real market for in the first place.  

For every flaming egoistic wine producer, who used the money made in some other profession to make himself or herself into a Helen Turley-esque wine star--in Europe usually with govt subsidies--and who thought it was sexy to make wine and now is finding his "hobby" and social climbing tool too expensive, we will now see yet another farmer forced from his land, land that many of them have farmed all their lives through thick and thin. 

Zev Robinson's social documentary brings home the plight of some of these grape farmers repeatedly. In my opinion, the film is about 30 minutes too long (but do not let that deter you from seeing it, because it is so worthwhile) and should be cut to fit the one-hour documentary time frame favored by public television and cable channels.  Nevertheless, this film is a must for those who have an interest in wine and social commentary.  I very highly recommend it.

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After spending part of this year traveling in Galicia and drinking delicious Ribeira Sacra wines that seldom top 13.5% (and often have 12.5-13% alcohol), I find it harder and harder to even taste the travesties that Parker and Jay Milller and the Numanthia-Pingus-Clos Erasmus lovers of the world think are real wine. This style of wines, in my humble opinion (I sold top-end wines to the best restaurants of  New York for twenty years), has caused a per capita drop in wines, since the higher the alcohol, the less wine consumed. 

High alcohol wines cut into by the glass sales, restaurant wine sales where second bottle sales are lower because of powerhouse wine styles and even in home consumption, where even this veteran wine man often finds that he and his companion have left a third of a bottle of such wines undrunk, something we never experienced when tasting and drinking over dinner the wines of Ribeira Sacra, which average around 13% (with many at 12%-12.5%).

Ribeira Sacra: Where Godello and Mencía are bound for glory by Gerry Dawes (Wine News, Fall 2009)

Ribeira Sacra Tasting Notes by Gerry Dawes©2009

BTW, Ribeira Sacra sales are up 35% this year in this down market.

About Gerry Dawes

Gerry Dawes was awarded Spain's prestigious Premio Nacional de Gastronomía (National Gastronomy Award) in 2003. He writes and speaks frequently on Spanish wine and gastronomy and leads gastronomy, wine and cultural tours to Spain. He was a finalist for the 2001 James Beard Foundation's Journalism Award for Best Magazine Writing on Wine, won The Cava Institute's First Prize for Journalism for his article on cava in 2004, was awarded the CineGourLand prize in 2009 and received the Association of Food Journalists 2009 Second Prize for Best Food Feature in a Magazine for his Food Arts article, a retrospective piece about Catalan star chef, Ferran Adrià.

Mr. Dawes is currently working on a reality television

series on wine, gastronomy, culture and travel in Spain.

Experience Spain With Gerry Dawes: Culinary Trips to Spain & Travel Consulting on Spain
Gerry Dawes can be reached at gerrydawes@aol.com; Alternate e-mail (use only if your e-mail to AOL is rejected): gerrydawes@hotmail.com

The Emerging Wines of Valencia:

by Gerry Dawes copyright2006

(First appeared in Spain Gourmetour magazine [consumer edition, 400,000 copies of which were circulated as an insert in The New York Times in Fall, 2006)

The exotic, once Moorish-dominated Comunitat Valenciana–which encompasses the provinces of Valencia, Alicante and Castellón de la Plana–and its capital, the ancient, but suddenly ultra-modern and rapidly growing Mediterranean port city, Valencia, has long been known for its wild end-of-winter Fiesta called Las Fallas and sunny beaches that have become nirvana for northern Europeans who flock to Valencia like Americans do to Florida. Gastro-nomically, Valencia is known world-wide for paella–in reality a wide variety of rice dishes made with local bomba or senia arroces–and nationally for its, Mediterranean seafood, Valencia oranges and clementines from Castellón, almonds and almond turrón candy from Jijona and dates from the largest date palm forest in Europe in Elche (both in Alicante province). Until recently, except for the large quantities of bulk wines shipped most to northern Europe, the only vinos la Comunitat Valenciana was known for were a strange, but exotic and wonderful vino rancio from Alicante called Fondillón and sweet dessert mistelas made from luscious moscatel grapes from the vineyards of Valencia and Alicante. (see more)