Showing posts with label Spanish Wine Week. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Spanish Wine Week. Show all posts

Friday, August 27, 2021

Spanish Wine Week at La Cave, Tuesday 5th October, 2021

 PRESS RELEASE by Jean Smullen

Spanish Wine Week at La Cave

Tuesday 5th October, 2021 


Spanish wines are currently in great demand. There are so many positives in terms of their production and innovation to appeal to the Irish wine consumer. It is not surprising to see that Spain overtook France and Italy here in terms of volume sales in 2018 and today Spanish wine is the second most popular country of origin on the Irish market

Spanish wine has a lot going for it, the climate is generally excellent for viticulture, there are plenty of old vines and a lot of indigenous grape varieties. Spain also has a very good track record when it comes to producing organic and biodynamic wines. 90% of organic grapes globally come from European wine regions, and within Europe Spain comes in second place in terms of organic production, 11.6% of all wines produced in Spain are now organic

Wines of Spain continue to be very active on this market in terms of their promotional work and this has helped sales of Spanish wine to grow strongly. Initiatives such as Spanish Wine Week help drive awareness for Spanish wine with the Irish consumer

Now that restaurants are open again and indoor dining is back, Wines of Spain will be turning its focus to the restaurant and wine bar sector. The 6th edition of the Spanish Food & Wine Week will be a focal point for this. Spanish Food & Wine week will take place from 4th-10th October, 2021 and the programme will include a number of consumer events featuring food and wine tastings and cookery demonstration presented by Ireland's most prestigious food and wine experts and chefs. Spanish Food & Wine week will also feature lots of discounts and promotional offers countrywide through a network of wine shops, off licences, restaurants, wine bars and on-line retailers

On Tuesday 5th October, 2021, La Cave Wine Bar, Dublin's oldest and original wine bar will join forces with Jean Smullen WSET to offer a fun evening of Spanish Food and Wine in their upstairs function room. Jean will present a selection of six wines from a number of regions in Spain that will highlight the unique diversity of these Spanish wine styles. A selection of Tapas to match the wine will also be served. Those attending can enter a draw to win an exclusive wine hamper featuring all six wines. For the duration of Spanish Food & Wine Week, La Cave Wine Bar will also be offering a range of Spanish Wines by the Glass for their wine bar customers to purchase

Details:

Tuesday 5th October, 2021 18:30-20:30 La Cave Wine Bar, 28 South Anne Street, Dublin 2. €25.00 (please note tickets much be booked in advance of the tasting)

Tel: (01) 679 4409

E: lacavewinebar@gmail.com


Wednesday, October 14, 2020

Tindal Helmed Spanish Wine Week Webinar. The evolutionary journey of Spanish Wine.

Tindal Helmed Spanish Wine Week Webinar

The evolutionary journey of Spanish Wine

A "cathedral" in Jerez


Back in 2013, at a dinner in Ballymaloe House, Telmo Rodríguez declared that wine in Spain “had been in the wrong hands, now it is starting to be in the right hands. I am between a boring generation and an exciting generation”. 


Now Telmo finds himself handing over the baton to that new generation of Spanish winemakers, as he told this week’s Spanish Wine Week webinar hosted by Tindal’s Harriet Tindal MW.


After 30 years pushing the boundary, he is excited in his new role as mentor. “There is a most exciting new generation, time now to help and support them, to pass on the experience…. especially to help and push on the kids from the countryside. Now I love to teach and leave the others to do the job. I’m very proud of the last 30 years, recuperating grapes, recuperating vineyards. Now’s the time to recuperate the small grower.”


Mountain wine
Long before the Ballymaloe visit, he had heard of a legendary mountain wine from Malaga, via references to it from the unlikely pairing of Shakespeare and Hugh Johnson.

But it had disappeared and off he went to Malaga and began to search for the high altitude old vineyards and, as is his habit, talked a lot to the old people. He didn’t get too far but, in 1998, settled on an area and with advice from Château Y’Quem, started production. He secured a plot and then planted it with Moscatel.  It took three or four years. He finally got it right and the results were exquisite. 


Harriet Tindal got the best from a strong line-up for the seminar which was titled "The Progress of Tradition. A discussion on the evolutionary journey of Spanish Wine.” Telmo’s colleagues on the panel were Jonatan García, Suertes del Marques, Tenerife; Jan Petersen, Fernando de Castilla, Jerez; and Sara Pérez, Mas Martinet, Priorat.

 The dazzling white albariza soil of Jerez


When Jan Petersen took over Fernando de Castilla in 2000, the small firm was already well-known in Spain for the quality of its sherries and brandies. The firm organised new staff in both production and sales and that, along with the acquisition of a neighbouring high-quality vineyard in 2001, led to their wines being recognised worldwide. In 2000, they were selling 30,000 bottles, now it is 400,000.


In his previous work with Osbournes, Jan had noticed a tendency towards buying better quality sherry. “There was a trend towards quality and we (Fernando de Castilla) helped create that trend, making more interesting sherry. We will always remain in that premium sector, will never supply big supermarket chains. We are also working hard on our brandy (which is raised in sherry casks). We have a very good network of distributors who, like Tindal, share our philosophy.

With Telmo (right) in Ballymaloe 2013


“History, that’s where we need to start, making tradition into modernity. Jerez is the most traditional wine area in Spain as wine has been made here for over 3,000 years. People call me a sherry romantic but go back in history and see what kinds of wines were appreciated. The cheap sherry market is dying. Indeed, the average age of consumers for one of the best known brands was surveyed at 77 years old.”


Jan is more into the lighter sherries and the firm bottles no less than five wines En Rama. “We were the first to use clear bottles for sherry and now some of the bigger companies have followed us. Lots of smaller companies didn’t exist 20 years ago are finding customers.”


“To make the highest quality, you need the highest quality fruit - you need to start in the vineyard. We harvest by hand and we don’t transport the fragile young wines to the cellar immediately - we wait a year to take them to the cathedrals of wine.” Lots of attention to detail here also, floors are watered regularly, good ventilation is maintained and the cellar faces the Atlantic.

Sometimes, the old ways are best. In Priorat.


Harriet introduced Sara Pérez and told us she was “pushing barriers in Priorat”. And you could see straight away that Sara is determined to get the very best from the granitic and schist soil of the land, a land capable of so much diversity in its wines.


“We must stretch ourselves, need to express our place, our small vineyards, our magic soil, in our wines. It is important to live together with our tradition and future. We don’t use a lot of technology. If we ignore the past (which includes orange and sweet wine), we’ll not have doors and windows to the future.”



Harriet had many slides, photos and videos to illustrate the various points but the one that stood out for me was that of the amazing extended vines of Jonatan García in Tenerife. These are over 100 years old and stretch to between 40 and 50 meters. They take a different kind of pruning!


They grow mostly red grapes with Listán Negra the most popular. But there are many varieties on the island, most with unfamiliar names. There are some 50 indigenous grapes and they are still counting.

The long vines of Tenerife 


He was asked if manpower is a problem for him. “I’m a bit lucky. There are lots of young people familiar with the vines, always family to help and more manpower available at weekends.”


Spain, with its youth, its innovation, its diversity of terroir, (“a continent more than a country”, one speaker said), its huge selection of styles and grapes, its reserve of experience (as illustrated by Telmo (born into wine), and there are many more)), its respect for the past, its well-made well-priced wines, is very well placed indeed to be a major player at the quality end of the wine market for decades to come. Salud!


While sometimes sailor Telmo may be passing on the baton, that didn’t stop him from getting up early on the morning of the seminar to attend to the harvest. It was pretty cold outside - “I tell people the Rioja harvest is in winter” and he had the fire blazing in the background. Zoom doesn’t miss much.

Tuesday, July 21, 2020

Spanish Wine Week Coming Up in October, plus more on wine, spirits and beer in Cheers #13

Cheers #13

SPANISH WINE WEEK will be BACK in October from the 12th to the 18th
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Wine glass
💃🏼
Tons of events & promotions around Ireland

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Save the date & stay tuned
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#SWW2020 can't wait
Clinking glasses


Tuscany Bistro re-launch Italian Supperclub - The Dingle Gin Edition
Tuscany Bistro, Castletroy are delighted to announce the re-launch of our first Italian Supperclub: The Dingle Gin Edition. This event will be filled with a cooking demo of a starter, main course, and dessert all infused with Dingle Gin, each course paired with a Dingle Gin cocktail. There will be arrival Canapes & Cocktails at 6.30pm (10th August). Tickets via Eventmaster here .


Wines Direct Offer A Taste of Portugal

In honour of Quinta do Crasto making it to #8 on the TOP 50 World's Best Vineyards, a selection of the best wine destinations in the world, we present to you the Taste of Portugal Case. The ever so perfect Portugal case features three wines from Quinta do Crasto and three wines showcasing our top Portuguese picks from Pousio and Pessoa. Details here.


UK Government Sleepwalking to Fine Wine Disaster

A stark picture of a post-Brexit UK wine trade fills David Allen MW with horror.

The WSTA is the UK wine trade's political lobby group, so when I joined their recent Post-Brexit Trading for Fine Wine Merchants webinar, I was expecting they might paint a picture of the UK government failing to understand the implications of Brexit for the UK's fine wine sector.
The picture painted, however, of a government sleepwalking towards a disaster for the wine industry was far more horrifying than I had imagined. More here