A customer told me a story about ending up in the hospital after sharing a single bottle of red wine with two other people, over a large meal. He became violently ill a couple of hours after leaving the restaurant. While in the ER he feared at first that he would die and then, as more of his insides keep surfacing, was afraid that he would not. This guy drinks moderate amounts of wine on a weekly basis and does not usually buy things from the bargain shelves. I don’t know exactly which wine he and his party consumed but I know the restaurant, the sommelier and the wines and none of them are badly made or have a lot of unnecessary chemical additives. This experience caused this wine drinker to decide that tannins are to blame for his violent adverse reactions. Now,  stays away from bold, tannic reds which he loves but feels he can’t drink. What really went wrong?

Somewhat ironically, tannins usually don’t bother people. However, this term is common so we use it. The truth is that two other compounds found in wine are far more likely to cause you to feel badly: sulphite and histamine. If you can eat dried fruit, drink white wine or drink orange juice, you do not have a sulphite intolerance; there is far more sulphite in your container of OJ than in any of the bottles on my shelves. Histamine can be problematic, especially from those who suffer from asthma. It’s thought that people intolerant to wine cannot degrade histamine properly because they are deficient in diamine oxidase (the enzyme fulfilling this role). However, a recent study I saw showed no correlation between histamine content and wine intolerance. Red wines have 0.6 – 4.0 grams/litre of histamine and whites a lot less. So if your doctor says it’s ok, try taking an antihistamine before you drink red wine the next time and see what happens.  

The offending wine might have been simply an ingredient – active or inactive – the cocktail that made our friend from above ill. Stress, dehydration, food, quatinty consumes and bugs hanging about in your system could also contribute to an adverse reaction. I also hear often that people are allergic to wine. That may be true, but genuine wine allergies are extremely rare (a true allergic reaction involves an immune response to an allergen, most commonly a protein). Sadly, there’s so little conclusive medical research about adverse wine reactions that there’s very little that can be done for those who have more or less random negative reactions to wine. Seems like the only thing we can be remotely certain of is this: most, if not all, unpleasant reactions to wines are food intolerances. There’s something to chew on.

Cheers, everybody!   -Winemonger Candy

Everything written here is unresearched, not scientifically proven and based completely on my opinion. The only thing that is indisputable is that this comes from my heart and from deep inside my gut, soul and spirit. It is, therefore, extraordinarily biased.

I was a Spaniard in a former life. Of that I am certain. Being adopted has a lot of perks beginning with your being able to choose where your ancestors were from. I’m fairly certain mine were Galician; all the Candy ingredients are there: fair skin, blue eyes, frightening weather, stone rondevels dotting rugged mountainous terrain, bizarre dolmens, a huge bagpipe culture and most significantly, people absolutely in love with their food and wine. I love the wines of this area of course and while a flabby, warmer-climate, oaked Albarino might make me a little mad, it’s the rest of Spain over which I am conflicted.

The question is this: will Spain sell its oeno-soul or will it buck up and retain its identity? The answer might lay within the Spaniard’s own dualistic nature: he is, at once, sternly pragmatic and fiercely adherent to tradition. Most of the time you can make this jive I suppose but with wine – Spanish wine – it’s a slippery slope.

They say that Spanish wine is what it is because of two major factors: altitude and latitude. Of the former, it is true that about 90% of Spain’s vineyards are higher than any major French wine region; of the latter, most of her vineyards are in the low 40s of latitude and perfect for grape growing.

I say there’s a third contributing factor in those great, unique, singular wines I savored while I lived there: attitude. I have it. Hell, when I lived there, we didn’t consider drinking wines that were new vintage. In fact, I don’t recall seeing them on the lists* in the bars in which I ate in Valencia. *list is stretching it; mostly we looked at bottles lined up on the wall and asked for one. If it was white and didn’t show signs of slight oxidation, we considered it “too New World”. If it was red and didn’t have a brown rim around the edge once in the glass, we deemed it “too young”. You see the theme: even in bars, older wine was served. I do not mean that older is always better; any of you who know me know that’s not how I see things. However, my daily wine drinking experience as a resident in Spain did not involve a lot of wine just put into the bottle. We just don’t want to drink them, says the Spaniard wannnabe.

So what to make of New World-styled Spanish wines, alcoholic, plushy, deep in colour, dark, tannic, extracted, cold soaked, new-oaked? Trendy? Yes. Appealing to California Cab drinkers? Yes. Financially viable for winemakers in Spain? Yes. Worth investigating? Yes. The future of Spanish wine? Probably in which case I’ll be left behind. Do I myself like some of them? Absolutely and without apology.  True to the character of the country and her people? I can’t say yes to this one. That’s for y’all to decide. Do young, high-alcohol, over-oaked Spanish Cabs piss me off? Yes. Why? Because we just didn’t drink them because they didn’t work for everyday eating and drinking.

I love Spain because I am the only person my late 86-year old YaYa had anything nice to say about and that was: “I like her. She eats everything and I don’t have to suffer.” I love Spain because my mom-in-law there said about me on first glance, “I can’t send her back to her mother like that. She’s too skinny and I would die of embarrassment.” I love Spain because the Spaniards I know don’t give a darn about making wine for anybody other than themselves. So when I see the “great”, “new”, “star” wines from Spain being compared to “great” French wine, I cringe. After all, that’s the last thing a Spaniard wants to hear. At least, that’s the last thing any Spaniard I know wants to hear. Attitude. Not arrogance. Nor without merit either. If you have ever had an old comfortable red from Castilla y Leon with a plate of jamon serrano followed by a bowl of chicken broth while dining in a cloistered monastery with the one young monk they allow to speak to visitors then you get my perspective. If you haven’t, I can only say that this is the kind of life experience that I hope we all have more of.�

My wish is that all of you take the chance to drink Spanish wine that defines, illustrates and embodies this “attitude” of which I write. Meanwhile, thank you for reading this nostalgic, opinionated piece of nonhistorical, nonfactual pseudo-journalism.

Saludos from your grateful winemonger,
- Candy

The cheesemongers want you to know that we have some beautiful cheeses on sale right now! Be sure to stop in and include these beauties in your dinner, lunch or even breakfast plans this week:

Mt Tam 20% off – a triple cream cheese at the ladies from Cowgirl Creamery.  Soft, rich, buttery and all organic.

Roquefort 20% off – the only handmade Roquefort still left in existence.  The real deal French Roquefort.  Due to some tiffs over tariffs Rouquefort has been a true luxury over the past few months but the price has finally come down.  Yippee!

Langres 30% off – A lovely little French softie made in the high plains of Champagne. Langres cheese traced back from the 18th century and has a depression at the top of the cheese in order to pour champagne over the cheese before serving.  Great for a special occasion or a decadent evening in front of the TV.