Summer is here. If there is any question, it was 98 degrees in San Diego yesterday. Two things crossed my mind: 1) Ensure the air conditioning works; and 2) drink something really cold. Number one, check. Number two, got it! This week’s Wine of the Week was a wonderful choice, if I do say so myself – 2009 Granbazán Ámbar Albariño from Rias Baixas (located in Galicia in Northwestern Spain). But first, let us take a tour of the winery.
The Granbazán winery is an entrepreneurial project designed to unite the small and fragmented properties of Galicia in the early 1980′s. An initial lack of direction resulted in unlabeled bottles in the family cellar with not enough means or knowledge to offer the wines. Enter Granbazán (Agro de Bazán). With the addition of technological-oenologists, the development of the cold maceration process technique, and maturing albariño in French oak barrels (the first to do so), they are now producing some of the best albariños available on the Iberian peninsula!
I was fortunate enough to taste two of their albariño wines, the 2007 Granbazán Limousin and the just-released 2009 Granbazán Ámbar. Be it known that neither of these wines disappoint! The first thing one notices about the 2007 Limousin is the beautiful frosted bottle. The grapes are hand-harvested from 28-year-old vines, destemmed, and very gently crushed. They are cooled and transferred to crio-macerators where a 12-hour prefermentive maceration (using dry ice) takes place. After a fermentation of 16 days the wine is matured in new French and Hungarian oak barrels for six months. In the glass, the Limousin shows a pale, golden color. On the nose, floral and fruit aromas take over with hints of oak. A wonderfully smooth wine on the palate, light citric fruit and soft oak caress your mouth as you swallow. This award-winning wine is in limited production (only 650 cases) but well worth seeking out.
Next (and the Wine of the Week) is the 2009 Ámbar Albariño. This wine was surely a treat for me. I absolutely love albariños and have found one of my all-time favorites whites in this wine. Destemmed grapes are submitted to a cold fermentation for eight hours and then the wine is fermented in stainless steel tanks for about one and a half months. The wine remains in these tanks for an additional eight months to mature and develop. Much like the Limousin a pale, golden color ensues in the glass. This wine is wonderful on the nose, with aromas of green apple and citrus. Crisp acidity and like flavors coat the palate of this wonderfully enjoyable wine. With the Ámbar I enjoyed some light tapas – padrón peppers, Manchego cheese, and pinchos morunos. I couldn’t imagine a better wine for the time. My only regret was that I did not have more of it!
Life is short. Drink Spanish wine!
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i completely agree with bodega…i’ve tasted through a number of albarino’s in the new york market and find this to be a well-balanced terroir-centric albarino. good thing we have it at an amazing price. http://www.seagrapewines.com/sku8420426012005.html