Why I love Spain though it breaks my heart and pisses me off – Winemonger Candy’s rant
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